In my photography, I attempt to inventory the vicissitudes of my human condition. I respond to a host of ever-changing perceptions of my appearance. Who people perceive me to be is an abiding question. And this concern greatly influences my own behavior and perspective. Growing up Chinese in Memphis, Tennessee, contributes to my interests of fitting identities. People have continually responded to me as different, even in my own family. As a result, I seem to question what I should be. I see myself not only as Other, but also as Invisible. In my photographs, I concoct scenarios and slip into contrived moments in which I have no ownership of the identity at all.

I work with medium format film—in color and black and white formats— and digital photography. I use prime lenses in order to force myself into situations and positions. Additionally, I make it a point to do everything in the camera in order to avoid using of post-camera manipulation. The camera is a co-conspirator and it allows me to enhance my invisibility in the world and to play with assumed identities. I look to the repertoire of portrait photography history (i.e. early British psychoanalysis photographs, Claude Cahun, images from National Geographic and Cindy Sherman) in order to create and accessorize the many roles I inhabit. Knowledge of cinema (in terms of narrative and stylization) adds to the layers I seek to weave into the visual stories I compose that point in the direction of a newly emergent form of globalized identity. Some of the roles I have tried on include: an impassive lover; a Maoist; the person my family wanted me to be—an English teacher, a white-collared worker; a member of the trades—a fishmonger, a waiter, a tailor and an orchestra musician. I appear in the space of my work as a hybrid character, neither fully Oriental (a Charlie Chan, Mystical Alien, Communist), neither fully Occidental (Dominant, Libertarian, Equal), neither fully Meridional (Religious, Conservative, Rice-eater, Yue-speaker).

A constant motif that recurs in my photographs has to do with the passivity that manifests in relation to the roles I assume, as if I were an actor who does not want to be in the play. I am the singular character in my photographs, but I am not sure who it is that I have become. It is likely that it is always about somebody else’s perception of me. I turn the camera on myself, not fully showing myself, not fully becoming an Other. I am metaphorically and literally surveying an experiential topography cobbled from Chinese and Western terrain alike.

May 2010
Tommy Kha