This portrait of San Francisco resident Wong Hen Suey relates to an unusual 1928 court case which highlights anti-Chinese sentiment in California as well as speaks to the varied and complicated uses of photography.

According to a newspaper article published in the San Francisco Examiner in July of 1928, Wong Hen Suey was born in San Francisco in 1884. When he was 14, he got his passport photo taken in order to travel to China with his parents, returning a year later. He traveled to China again in 1924, but when he returned four years later he was stopped by Immigration Officials at Angel Island on the grounds that someone else had used his name and papers to enter the country. Wong Hen Suey vehemently denied this, using his first passport as proof, but officials did not accept that he was the same person as the 14-year old in the photo.

Wong Hen Suey’s case was taken up by attorneys J.H. Shapiro and Oliver P. Stidger. At the time, Stidger was the attorney for the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce, an organization that promoted Chinese businesses. In the Examiner article, Stidger declares the business to be an outrage and that the pictures are one and the same, a fact verified by the police.

There is a notation on the back of the present photograph indicating it is a “picture of Wong Hen Suey on departure from this country in 1924.” There is also a return address for Shapiro and, interestingly, a studio stamp for the notable San Francisco commercial artist Gabriel Moulin. Though quite prolific, Moulin was not a passport photographer (as far as we know) and since this does not appear to be a copy photo, it is possibly printed by Moulin from a negative acquired from the passport offices.

While we found several court records showing writs of habeas corpus filed by Shapiro and Stidger on Wong Hen Suey’s behalf, we have been unable to determine how the case concluded.