It Started with a Photograph Through a Window...

...and turned into an epic tale of survival, sacrifice, family, and perseverance.

My first photograph of Be Nguyen, aka “Adam Tailor,” taken in 2018.

This is a brief summary of a 3-part article I just published in collaboration with Elise DeGooyer for the South Seattle Emerald, an independent community media site. I trust that I don’t need to editorialize why stories like this, at this particular time in our country’s history, are so important to share. And also to remind us all that every photograph has an untold story behind it, waiting to be told.

I started photographing Be Nguyen in 2018. His presence in my Pioneer Square neighborhood was legion. Everyone knew Be (pronounced “BAY”), but most everyone knew him by his shop’s name — Adam Tailor.

Be in his Pioneer Square shop.

For 40 years, Be mended and stitched his way into the hearts of thousands of office workers and neighbors from his tiny, glass-framed shop on South Jackson street. He could often be seen bent over his machine or smoking outside his shop all hours. Like I said, his presence was legion.

In August 2024, without warning, Be’s shop was empty. He had just received a poor prognosis on a health issue that forced him to close shop and get treatment. For the first time since 1990, Pioneer Square was without Be.

When Be disappeared, I realized that I probably had two dozen photos of him from my street work over the years, but I had no idea who he was outside of his shop. My curiousity, as they say, got the best of me.

It turned out that the Adam Tailor shop that I knew was not the only one in existence. Be’s family — meaning, the women in his life — had been running a second Adam Tailor shop in the Columbia City neighborhood of south Seattle since 2000.

Phung (daughter), Nhung (mother), Tiffany (granddaughter)

His wife Nhung:

His daughter Phung:

And his granddaughter Tiffany…

…a very cool woman who’d largely been raised in her grandfather’s 400-square-foot tailor shop:

Where Be’s shop was congested (not cluttered — everything had it’s place) and utilitarian, with barely a touch of color, the Columbia City shop was a feast for the senses.

Adam Tailor’s Columbia City shop

But my curiousity didn’t stop with the visuals. I soon discovered that the Nguyens had a story to tell that I wish everyone in this country would listen to.

Here are a few key moments in their tale of escaping the communists in Vietnam and building a community here in Seattle.

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Be and Nhung were married young in Viet Nam in the 1970’s.

Be escaped the communist regime in 1980 to make a new life for his family and landed in a Phillipine Refugee Camp.

Meanwhile, Be’s escape set the authorites onto Nhung and her three young daughters, whom they harassed with extortions and imprisonment.

For years after Be left, Nhung repeatedly tried to escape Vietnam to join him. She tried and failed 50 times before finally succeeding to land in a Thai refugee camp, where she spent three years with her daughters. During those failed escapes, they were imprisoned several times, survived a capsized boat, avoided death in the jungle, and had to continually pay off corrupt officials and smugglers.

Meanwhile, Be was sponsored by a Catholic organization and was flown to Portland, Oregon where he borrowed 25 cents to call a man in Seattle whom he had met at the refugee camp.

In 1984, Be opened his shop, and over the next sixe years he worked long hours, stitched hundreds of trousers, and eventually saved enough to fly his family over.

From Be’s front window, the view of the Kingdome in the 1980’s, Seattle’s original indoor stadium that was imploded in 2000.

In 1990, Nhung, Be and their daughters were finally reunited. That’s 10 years of separation, if you’re counting.

Nhung’s plane ticket from Bangkok to Seattle, Feb 25, 1990.

There’s lots more to this story — how, from their Columbia City shop, Nhung and Be sponsored and housed several more family members to join them in Seattle, how the long line of extended family memers that they have sponsored have settled into South Seattle, graduating high schools, trade schools and colleges, and taking on a wide range of jobs in their communities; and how the family returns to Vietnam every year and raises money for street people.

And how three generations of Nguyens and their shop have contributed to this rich fabric of community here in Seattle.

You can read their full story in the South Seattle Emerald.

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