Tommy Kha: Half, Full, Quarter - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In this first major monograph, featuring almost a decade of work, Tommy Kha explores the highly personal psycho-geography of his hometown. As the artist states, "Memphis has become, for me, not only the place where I was raised but an active borderland between fantasy and memory, nostalgia and history, nonfiction and mythology." Memphis is where his mother, fleeing Vietnam in the early 1980s, settled, along with his extended family. Throughout the work, his mother emerges as a recurring character, sometimes the subject of quiet photographic study, and in others, a collaborative muse. "I'm a cut of my mom," Kha asserts, "Every photograph I make of her is a Half Self-Portrait." In snapshots drawn from a family album that serves as the one record of her journey to the United States, she is the source of nostalgia and barely captured memory. In assembling a visual account of the struggle to find his own voice and narrate the fragmented history of his family, Kha challenges the cultural amnesia around Asian lives and experiences in recent American histories. Acclaimed author Hua Hsu contributes an engaging essay, "People Need to Smile More," and MacArthur Fellow An-My Lê conducts an incisive conversation with Kha that delves into his family history and artistic strategies.

Tommy Kha: Half, Full, Quarter is the result of the Next Step Award, a partnership between Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, in collaboration with the 7G Foundation. An exhibition of the work will open at Baxter St in New York in February 2023.

Review Quotes

"Kha's poignant photographs bring together his family's East Asian ancestry and everyday life in the American South, where found photographs, self-portraits and "half self-portraits" of his mother tell a story of displacement and shared identity."

--Stefanie Li, Galerie magazine

"'These are mostly from the book, but also thinking a lot about the Southern landscape," [Kha] says, referring to Half, Full, Quarter, his first monograph, published this February by the prestigious photo-centric publisher Aperture." --Chris McCoy, Memphis magazine

"The artist makes wry commentaries on the immigrant experience using scattered visual fragments, from the depths of Tennessee's Chinatown to the fishing communities of rural Vietnam. A new book and exhibition prove there's method to the melange." -Larissa Pham, British Journal of Photography

"Kha's layered portraits, still lifes, and landscapes exist alongside his mother's own photographs. The collaborative world between mother and son expands." --Harley Wong, Artforum

"Together, they form a picture not just of his family or how they made a home in the South but of how important humor, placemaking and ultimately photography are to Kha's understanding of this region." --Michael Adno, The New York Times

"'Ghost Bites' maps the psycho-geography of a fractured self; of all the losses, phantoms, and questions that emerge from the diasporic lineage." --Jacinda Tran, The Amp