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In "The End of the American Photography" from What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Love of Images, states that "'American Photography' is not merely a phrase denoting the photographs made in or about the United States, or by its citizens. The phrase now has the same ring of inevitability that we associate with 'French painting,' 'Greek sculpture,' 'Dutch landscape,' and 'Egyptian hieroglyphics,' and the same potential for reduction to a self-evident cliché, the automatic linkage of a nation and medium. The connotations of photography -- its technical, scientific, progressive modernity, its cheapness and democractic availability, its middle-brow, petit-bourgeois social position, its mythic status as a natural and universal language--all commend themselves to American national ideology." So what is Chinese Photography in context of the above excerpt? Where do I stand as a Chinese-American photographer? Do my photographs can be "Chinese", "American", both or nothing at all? My current series, or one of four series, Made in China, are narratives inspired by Chinese film genres that I have seen growing up in Memphis. Set to an Orientalized backdrop but with non-Asian models, these photographs are made in the United States but they are the creation from my Chinese background. It parallels with my growing personal outlook of myself and identity. Are these photographs Chinese, American, or anything? I can't be Chinese because I am American but I can't be American because I'm Chinese. Currently, I'm looking for interested models to continue this series. Please e-Mail me. 
To see more examples, visit the Made in China series gallery. |
