Tommy Kha, heepshead II, Los Angeles, 2018.
“If there’s pathos there also has to be humour in order to understand basic human experiences,” says Memphis-born and New York-based photographer Tommy Kha on the themes at play in his work. This tragicomic dynamic, with its roots in Greek drama, is present in much of the Yale-educated photographer’s work to date. His photographs, which deal with themes related to family, trauma, intimacy and representation, are closely connected to his family’s immigrant status (his family are originally from China; his mother was born in Saigon), and work as an artistic practice because this playfulness more often than not operates as a segway into dark or melancholic ideas.
This tension between sadness and comedy can be seen in his ongoing series Return to Sender (2010–), which was exhibited last autumn at New York’s LMAKgallery. The photographs show Kha being kissed by a string of strangers (over 140 at the time of publication), and draw forth a stream of ideas all tied to the act of kissing, including desire, visibility, intimacy and vulnerability. “The idea of kissing is a very defined image – it is a specific image in one’s mind. I guess I really challenged myself. Having other people kiss me, and then having them see the series altogether and how differently people kissed me, motivated me to keep going,” says Kha. The series is strange and stoic, beautiful and sad, lonely and funny, all at once. Through the humble act of the kiss and the accompanying hand and body gestures of Kha’s collaborators, the individual’s relationship with intimacy and desire are exposed; all the while Kha is blank and cooly receptive to their tender touches, dramatic grasps and passionate squeezes.
Left: Boyz, Williamsburg, 2018. Right: Prince, Midtown Memphis, 2018.
"The idea of kissing is a very defined image – it is a specific image in one’s mind."
“I didn’t want to react in the images because I didn’t want desire placed on my body. I wanted the kisser to be in charge of how they want to look,” explains Kha, with regard to his intentionally detached demeanour in Return to Sender. In this way, both the kisser (the strangers) and the kissed (Kha) maintain their own sense of agency. This exercise in power and control is an ongoing issue within Kha’s work in general. While Return to Sender received some criticism for perpetuating Asian stereotypes – namely, that in Western cinema, Asian men are rarely given a chance to be romantic or sensual – Kha, acknowledging that these critics “weren’t wrong necessarily”, says for him it was “enough” to be the director, photographer and to continuously work on this series over a long period of time.
As a queer Asian man growing up in the American South, the representation of marginalised communities has always been at the front and centre of Kha’s work. “In America right now, the conversation is very much about expanding ‘the narrative’ so that people are creating these kind of stories with people who look like me or people of colour or queer people or everyone who has been marginalised or hasn’t been heard. It’s starting to change very slowly,” he says. As a child and adolescent, Kha remarks that he didn’t see many people who looked like him, which was isolating. Resultantly, a response to this lack of community and representation has understandably found its way into his work. His latest series, Facades (2019–), for example, involves the insertion of a cardboard cut-out of his own face positioned over other people’s bodies. “When I’m photographing my cut-out image, it’s a way to control the way I’m depicted,” he says.
Left: Exchange Place VI, Midtown Memphis, 2018. Right: Headtown 3, New York City, 2017.