The Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An Introduction to Tseng Kwong Chi

Once, the Unit­ed States was known for send­ing forth the world’s most com­plained-about inter­na­tion­al tourists; today, that dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion arguably belongs to Chi­na. But it was­n’t so long ago that the Chi­nese tourist was a prac­ti­cal­ly unheard-of phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly in the West. That’s an impor­tant con­tex­tu­al ele­ment to under­stand when con­sid­er­ing the work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tseng Kwong Chi, who trav­eled around Amer­i­ca tak­ing pic­tures of him­self at var­i­ous rec­og­niz­able mon­u­ments and land­marks while wear­ing a suit most com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Chair­man Mao. The fig­ure that emerged from this project is the sub­ject of the new Nerd­writer video above.

“He called this char­ac­ter ‘an ambigu­ous ambas­sador,’ and, in a series he called ‘East Meets West,’ posed him — posed him­self — in front of var­i­ous icons of touris­tic Amer­i­ca,” writes Bri­an Dil­lon in a New York­er piece on Tsen­g’s work. “He leaps into the air in front of the Brook­lyn Bridge, stands impas­sive beside Mick­ey Mouse at Dis­ney­land, gazes off into the dis­tance with Nia­gara Falls behind him.”

Inspired by Richard Nixon’s 1972 vis­it to Chi­na and Deng Xiaop­ing’s 1979 vis­it to the U.S., Tseng pro­duced most of these pho­tos in the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies, and even “took the ambigu­ous ambas­sador to Europe, where he appears hero­ic before the Arc de Tri­om­phe, and diminu­tive between two police­men at the Tow­er of Lon­don.”

Born in British Hong Kong, then par­tial­ly raised in Cana­da and edu­cat­ed in Paris, Tseng arrived in New York in 1979, ready to join the down­town scene that includ­ed Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ann Mag­nu­son, Cindy Sher­man, and Kei­th Har­ing. It’s for his doc­u­men­ta­tion of Har­ing’s work, in fact, that he remains most wide­ly known, 35 years after his own AIDS-relat­ed death. But now, as tak­ing pic­tures of one­self in famous places around the world becomes an increas­ing­ly uni­ver­sal prac­tice, “East Meets West” draws more and more atten­tion. Maybe, in an art world where cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty is so fierce­ly declared and defend­ed, the very ambi­gu­i­ty of the ambas­sador por­trayed by Tseng — who, as Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak empha­sizes, “did­n’t want to be known as a Chi­nese artist, or an Asian-Amer­i­can artist, or a gay artist; he just want­ed to be an artist” — has become that much more com­pelling.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Icon­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of Gor­don Parks: An Intro­duc­tion to the Renais­sance Amer­i­can Artist

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

How Dorothea Lange Shot Migrant Moth­er Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Activist Graf­fi­ti Art of Kei­th Har­ing: A Video Essay

The Pho­to That Trig­gered China’s Dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (1966)

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham (RIP) on Liv­ing La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.