Michael from Five in One lifted the original handwriting from the Memphis Pizza Café's restroom to make these wonderful designs for shirts: 

Update: I think Michael is going to print some shirts for Cooper-Young Fest. Yay.

Tommy "You can wear it inside out if you want me to stay alive" Kha

Shambhala is a series I have been working on in both digital and now on slide film since 2008. All photographs are double exposures within the camera. Double exposures imply passage in time between framing of the two images that overlap to form the one image. This series marked the beginning where I started titling my photographs after translated metro station names. This series documents the events of lives waiting for their Shambhala; Shambhala in Tibetan Sanskrit means "place of peace, of happiness" and it served as the basis for the fictional place of Shangri-La. The metaphor for these photographs is that they can be seen as "stations" in life before moving on to the next destination, the anxiety of waiting before reaching a possible Shambhala.

I photographed these during a commission for ArtsMemphis' Bravo Memphis' coaster project. They choose fellow artists Shea Colburn, Roy Tamboli, Vitus Shell and I to submit images for four different coasters to be distributed across Memphis. We will be displaying the original works during the Bravo 2009-2010 kickoff party taking place on Huling Street August 27, 2009.

"Yellow Sand"

"Hanger Lane"

"Honey Lake"

Tommy "Can't seem to find his throne" Kha

We started filming for Savage County, a new web series from MTV New Media. So far, I'm working with a great cast and crew. The first went off at a rocky start but we're growing strong against the Law of Murphy. Here are some photographs from the set.

Amy LaVere gave me a call to come up to Nashville to do a quick shoot of her with Seasick Steve. It was copacetic getting to meet Seasick Steve, see Amy again and go to the famous Blackbird Studios.

Tommy "Somewhere" Kha

I had the opportunity to work on a teaser trailer about a month ago with (despite Texan city names) Memphis-born Austin Wages and Houston Wages and actor/director Luke Grimes (of ABC's Brothers and Sisters). Monica Summerfield decided to pursue producer roles so this was her first gig to do so. Rounding out the smaller crew members are filmmaker Eric Swartz, Sarah Fleming and a few other people I forgot their names. Check out the photos under the cut.

Dir. Luke Grimes

Because I will be away in New York next spring semester, I will miss my Lighting Studio class. I thought I started to training myself on how to light subjects and did a test roll on Kodak UC 120 film ISO 100. 

Light leaks. Interior shot with Alice Laskey-Castle of Five in One, an art space. 

Exterior night shot with Luke White of the Coach and Four, Snowglobe and Jeffrey James & the Haul.

Exterior night shot with Marianne Spengler.

Tommy "More to photograph" Kha

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.