Tseng Kwong Chi at Paul Kasmin

Art in America, June-July, 2008 by Edward Leffingwell

In 1978, the artist Joseph Tseng, not yet 30, changed his name to Tseng Kwong Chi and moved to New York. Born and educated in Hong Kong, he had studied in Vancouver, Montreal and Paris. In New York he established himself as a photographer and familiar of the art, fashion and club scenes of the day. Choreographer and dancer Muna Tseng observes that her brother "decided to be a self-appointed cultural ambassador of China," mixing stereotypes in his sunglasses and Mao jacket, a visitor's badge clipped to the chest pocket. In 1979 he began "The Expeditionary Series," featuring himself as the ubiquitous visitor from Mainland China--a place he never visited--drawn to sites much photographed by tourists. Armed with a square-format reflex camera and a tripod, he inserted himself in the mise-en-scene, triggering the release cable leading to the camera and retaining the visible cable to emphasize the artifice of the project.

Tseng willed himself monumental by association with monuments. He chose the site, assessed the quality and direction of light, planned the reflection on the lens of his sunglasses. He appears in the presence of important architecture, historic landmarks, natural wonders and other tourist attractions, all photo opportunities. In 1979, his destinations included the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, Disneyland, the gates of Paramount Pictures and Graceland, a cotton field in Tennessee, the dunes of Provincetown. That October he inserted himself in the middle of paper-littered lower Broadway, traditional site of ticker-tape parades. There are crowds along the barricades and a platoon of bagpipers ranked behind him, a few American flags, paper blowing in the wind. He has a beatific look on his face. It was the route just taken by Pope John Paul II, who had declared New York "capital of the world" while castigating the country's leaders for their neglect and exploitation of the poor.

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In 1982, in Washington, Tseng gazed up at the stone image of Lincoln, and the next year the monuments of London. There are images of Paris that year and, in 1984, the architecture of Brasilia, a city built to be photographed. In 1986 he acquired a Hasselblad and, working with an assistant, reversed the figure/ground relationship of his earlier work, increasing the depth of field as he appeared in the middle and far distance. He visited British Columbia, Banff, Lake Louise, the Grand Canyon. The exhibition included an image of Tseng in 1989, alone in the deep shadows of the day and HIV/AIDS. His back is to the camera. He stands before the facade of Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, casting his own long shadow upon a bollard, as though it were a gravestone. He died the following year. The 100 silver gelatin prints that make up Tseng Kwong Chi Self Portraits 1979-1989 were posthumously printed 36 inches square, framed in black and powerfully installed in wall-covering grids.

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