Tseng Kwong Chi, known as Joseph Tseng prior to his professional career[1] (Chinese: 曾廣智; September 6, 1950 – March 10, 1990), was a Hong Kong-born Americanphotographer who was active in the East Village[1] art scene in the 1980s. He is the brother of dancer/choreographer Muna Tseng.
Tseng's most famous body of work is his self-portrait series, East Meets West, also called the "Expeditionary Series". In the series, Tseng dressed in what he called his "Mao suit" and sunglasses (dubbed a "wickedly surrealistic persona"[1] by The New York Times) and photographed himself situated, often emotionlessly, in front of iconic tourist sites. These included the Statue of Liberty, Cape Canaveral, Disneyland,[1]Notre-Dame de Paris, and the World Trade Center.
Tseng also took over 40,000 of photographs of New York graffiti artist Keith Haring[3] throughout the 1980s working on murals, installations and the subway.[4] In 1984, his photographs were shown with Haring's work at the opening of the Semaphore Gallery East location in a show titled "Art in Transit". Tseng photographed[when?] the first Concorde landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport, from the tarmac.[1] According to his sister, Tseng drew artistic influence from Brassaï and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[1]
Cameron, Dan & Wei, Lily, Tseng Kwong Chi: Self Portraits 1979-1989 (Ben Brown Fine Arts & Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2008)
Kwong Chi Tseng, Tseng Kwong Chi, Citizen of the World (Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong, 2014)
Chi, Tseng Kwong, Amy Brandt, Alexandra Chang, Lynn Gumpert, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, Muna Tseng, Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing For the Camera (Chrysler Museum of Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York University in association with Lyons Artbooks, 2015)
References
^ abcdefghLoke, Margarett (October 18, 1996). "Inside Photography". The New York Times. p. 36. Retrieved March 10, 2014. To complete the image, he dropped the name he had always used, Joseph, and began using his Chinese name, Kwong Chi. And he insisted on the traditional last-name-first sequence, as in Mao Zedong.
^ abcdefghi【顯影】當東方符號遇上西方地標 [When Eastern symbols meet Western landmarks]. Apple Daily (in Chinese (Hong Kong)). January 15, 2020. Archived from the original on January 25, 2021. Retrieved December 31, 2023.