Holding humanity in precarious times: Pilsen through Akito Tsuda's lens

By Atziri Marquez | ISSUE 28

Windy and goddaughter Carmen posed on a moped in front of Windy's Market. Photo by Akito Tsuda 

‘I'm not made for Chicago winters’ I thought as I attempted to heat my frozen fingers in the Little Village Branch of the Chicago Public Library. I'd just spent an hour at the La Villita arch for a demonstration in support of the city's immigrant community. By December 2025, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods like Little Village had been gravely impacted by Operation Midway Blitz, a federal immigration enforcement campaign conducted by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), causing people to stay indoors for fear of being detained. It was there I stumbled upon a banner, showcasing Akito Tsuda's Pilsen Days, set in another historically Mexican neighborhood in Chicago's lower West Side. 

I had only been to Pilsen a handful of times before, mainly to provide legal support with the Resurrection Project. Here, however, I gazed at a different image of the neighborhood I'd become acquainted with. Here, I saw a black-and-white photograph of a young woman driving a moped, dressed in Adidas, jeans, and a bomber jacket. Behind her sat a young girl in a pinafore dress and white socks. They are in front of Windy's Market, their family's small business. It was the first of a hundred images I would see of Pilsen in a different lifetime, and the seed that changed how I interacted with the community. 

Originally from Hamamatsu, Japan, Akito Tsuda came to Chicago in 1988, enrolling at Columbia College to learn English and study photography. While working on a class assignment, he stumbled upon Pilsen, finding himself an immigrant among immigrants. Despite having only a minimal grasp of English and no Spanish, Akito succeeded not only in capturing the neighborhood's residents but also in being invited into their homes. The end result was a wide, eclectic collection of about 400 images that showcased the dynamic character of Pilsen, from children playing outside to young women brushing their hair to young men posing in gang attire to smiling families gathered together.

Even so, the images wouldn't see the light of day until many years later, as Akito eventually returned to Japan, taking his photos with him. They remained in storage until he shared them on Facebook and Instagram in 2014. What followed was a chorus of recognition: people identifying themselves or family members, moved by black-and-white images that echoed another time. From there, Akito reestablished an enduring connection with the Pilsen community. The photographs have since appeared in several photobooks and exhibitions, and a collection of one hundred images, along with recorded interviews, is now housed at the Chicago Public Library, providing me with much-needed context and tangibility. 

Eager for more insight into his work, I reached out to Akito for a Zoom interview. Given his palpable curiosity and kindness, it's no surprise he was so warmly welcomed into the Pilsen community. Akito mentioned his favorite photos were of families, fondly recalling how children he had just met reacted with instant joy upon realising their parents already knew him. As someone who was raised in a Mexican immigrant household and community, I was deeply moved by such loving depictions of my culture.  

Although he didn't set out to chronicle Mexican culture, Akito captures, and seems to have felt, the essence of Latinidad: a spirit of welcoming and belonging. In our interview, he recalled a ‘kinship that goes beyond kinship’, particularly in Latinx culture, and described being embraced so readily by residents despite coming from a different country. Indeed, in recorded interviews, several of Akito's Pilsen friends, such as Gina, whose grandfather is featured in the series, affirm Akito is ‘a member of the Pilsen family’ and express gratitude for how carefully he documents their lives, preserving memories of families who, at the time, often couldn't afford cameras. 

Akito does not shy away from depicting Pilsen's material realities. Like many Chicago neighborhoods, Pilsen has long contended with poverty and gang violence. In one image, a woman carrying an infant leans against a wall with peeling paint, an image that echoes residents' own accounts of neglect recorded in interviews with Akito. Yet even amid these conditions, families are portrayed with dignity and joy. 

In more recent years, Pilsen has faced new waves of struggle: gentrification that has displaced families since the mid 1990s, and since last year, ICE raids that have introduced another form of displacement and fear. Still, the community has not been passive. Residents have organised demonstrations, rapid response networks, and even distributed whistle kits - intended to alert neighbours of ICE presence - not only throughout Chicago, but Minneapolis, New York, and other cities affected by raids. 

It is against this backdrop that Akito's Pilsen Days takes on renewed meaning. Beyond the gift they offer to the Pilsen community, they've also offered me another way of seeing. I realised this more fully thanks to a recent conversation with George Geiger, a Communications professor at Malcolm X College and long-time resident of Pilsen whose family is featured in the series. The images offer, as George Geiger describes, ‘a different kind of protest’. They carry cultural memory, affirming the humanity, rootedness, and continuity of a community too often represented through crisis. In doing so, they gesture toward the promise of other Pilsen Days: children running in the rain, friends sharing a beer on the porch, parents holding their children close.

I wasn't born when Akito arrived in Pilsen, and I had no personal connection to the faces in the images. Even so, one need not be from Pilsen to be moved by the care and closeness these photographs convey. As Akito Tsuda poignantly notes in another of his works, Pilsen Days reminds us that we are all mirrors of each other. While his photographs stand the test of time, contributing to a broader intergenerational Latino archive, they also serve as an archive of humanity. They present simple joys and quiet intimacy that can go unnoticed or outright fractured when larger forces at play - be it gentrification or displacement - threaten the spirit of a people and place. For contemporary viewers, Akito's photos reflect a fuller version of the community than the crisis narratives that may dominate public discourse. These are neighbours whose lives have long been filled with joy, routine, and resilience. Pilsen has moved through countless waves of migration, adversity, and resistance. Through Tsuda's work, we also see Pilsen as a place where generations can reconnect across time, and where outsiders can encounter warmth, belonging, and care. 

Atziri Marquez

Atziri is an Immigration Legal Assistant from Southern California with a strong interest in migration narratives and histories. She studied Psychology, Linguistics, and Peace & Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. A bilingual Spanish speaker, she has also studied Japanese, French, German, and Arabic. She hopes to leverage her linguistic and legal training in a career dedicated to supporting migrant communities through human rights law and advocacy.