POST
Kimberly Lombardi
POST is an ongoing book series dedicated to represent the voices of the Korean-American adoptee community and to serve as a platform to share their stories. The name “POST” is derived from the project’s core mission to provide post-adoption support as there has been a lack of resources for adoptees to cope with the emotional and complex nature of being adopted. Adoptees experience tremendous loss in their lives: biological families, Korean culture, and official documented identity. Each publication focuses on one subject of loss through one specific medium: Photography, Letters, and Documents.
Photography explores the origins of transnational adoption between Korea and America. The first orphanages appeared in the 1950s due to the Korean War as thousands of children became parentless. This book progresses through time and ends with the second wave of adoptees in the 1980s, showcasing the first biracial family portraits. Letters is a collection of anonymous letters Korean mothers wrote to their children before they gave them up for adoption in the 1990s. Each letter details the mother’s immense pain and reasoning behind their decision. This book helps answer an adoptee’s most private and heartbreaking question: “Why? Why did my parents give me away?” Documents features seven adoptees’ recent journeys to find their birth parents only to discover their official documents are illegally altered, incomplete, or nonexistent. Being a Korean Adoptee, POST is specifically designed to represent my community but more importantly to reveal a glimpse of our internal conflicts to our adoptive families, biological families, friends, and strangers.