The Chain Letter Project (Vol. 2) is co-authored by the teachers, faculty, and students of Philips Academy during the spring of 2025 and installed at the start of fall term. This installation is ongoing at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
The Chain Letter Project (Vol. 1) was first presented as an extension of Kha’s 2023 solo exhibtion in Baxter St’s Project Space. The Chain Letter Project is a collective memory contributed to by AAPI friends from across the United States over the last year. This first iteration of the project comprises around 700 photographs.
Dear ____________,
Thank you for participating in this art chain letter project! Through the Addison Gallery, I am collecting images along the themes of “family” and “community.” We are accepting pictures from smartphones, point and shoot cameras, DSLR, any picture medium that follows the prompts below. A limited disposable cameras will be distributed from designated support, feel free to pass around the camera (be sure to return it!).
All images will be printed and will be installed as a photo’ collage wall, being added on to over the exhibition period.
You can make a picture of 1) whatever you choose in the theme of “community” and “collage” and/or 2) you can choose one of the following prompts.
1. Gather and arrange a community of red objects; photograph it.
2. How do you make a portrait of a person without photographing them? How would you make a non-portrait portrait?
3. Make a group portrait. Can you be in it too?
4. Photograph your favorite door in your neighborhood.
5. Find a familiar place with a large mirror. Make a selfie with another person; show the camera in the mirror.
6. Create a mask and document the process of making it. Have a family member wear it.
7. Photograph your favorite sign in your neighborhood.
8. Photograph your favorite item with someone you trust holding it.
9. Photograph a graffiti, a mural, or chalk drawing.
10. Make a picture of an eyeball, real or fictive.
11. Photograph an obsession. (Prompt from Richard Choi)
12. Photograph an interaction. (Prompt from Marie Arago)
13. Photograph food pictures—specifically restaurant pictures and grocery shopping. (Prompt from Alison Kuo)
14. Photograph a colorful storefront. (Prompt from Alison Kuo)
15. More abstractly, photograph something you wouldn’t want to part with.
16. Find and photograph a place with a name that shares letters with your first or last name.
17. Make and photograph a shrine or memorial dedicated to a real person.
18. Make a picture that shows you and your friends navigating in a new place.
19. While waiting in line, hold the camera behind you and take a picture without looking through the viewfinder.
20. Use the flash on a reflective surface in a friend’s room.
21. Make a picture of your favorite window in a neighbor’s home.
22. Make a picture of your parents’ collection.
23. Make a picture where you would tell a secret to a friend.
24. Restage a friend’s family picture that the friend has described from memory.
25. Photograph a neighbor’s favorite water source or body of water.
26. Make a picture of a “collage.”
27. Make a self-portrait sharing the frame.
Please note, this list is subject to change and expand.
- TK, Updated 2025.