Tseng Kwong Chi, known as Joseph Tseng prior to his professional career (

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

: ; September 6, 1950 – March 10, 1990), was a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

-born

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

who was active in the East Village art scene in the 1980s. He is the brother of dancer/choreographer Muna Tseng.

Work

Tseng was part of a circle of artists in the 1980s New York art scene including Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and Cindy Sherman. 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" by the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'') and photographed himself situated, often emotionlessly, in front of iconic tourist sites. These included the

Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty (''Liberty Enlightening the World''; French: ''La Liberté éclairant le monde'') is a List of colossal sculpture in situ, colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the U ...

Cape Canaveral , image = cape canaveral.jpg , image_size = 300 , caption = View of Cape Canaveral from space in 1991 , map = Florida#USA , map_width = 300 , type =Cape , map_caption = Location in Florida , location ...

, Disney Land,

Notre Dame de Paris Notre-Dame de Paris (; meaning "Our Lady of Paris"), referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité (an island in the Seine River), in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The cathedral, dedicated to the ...

, and the

World Trade Center World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may refer to: Buildings * List of World Trade Centers * World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...

. Tseng also took tens of thousands of photographs of New York

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

artist

Keith Haring Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...

throughout the 1980s working on murals, installations and the subway. In 1984, his photographs were shown with Haring's work at the opening of the

Semaphore Gallery Semaphore Gallery was a contemporary art gallery founded by Barry Blinderman and A. James Shapiro in 1980 in New York City, located at 462 West Broadway in the Soho district. In 1984, Semaphore East was also established on the corner of 10th and A ...

East location in a show titled "Art in Transit". Tseng photographed the first Concorde landing at Kennedy International Airport, from the tarmac. According to his sister, Tseng drew artistic influence from

Brassaï Brassaï (; pseudonym of Gyula Halász; 9 September 1899 – 8 July 1984) was a Hungarian–French photographer, sculptor, medalist, writer, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous H ...

and

Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as cap ...

Life

Although born in Hong Kong, Tseng's parents moved the family to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

when he was sixteen. He originally studied painting at Academie Julian, but switched to photography after one year. Tseng died of

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

-related illness in 1990, and was survived by his companion of seven years, Robert-Kristoffer Haynes, who remains a resident of New York City and serves as Registrar at

Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...

. Tseng's work is in the public collection of the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

in New York and

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

. Tseng has been included in the

Asian American Arts Centre The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) is a non-profit organization located in Chinatown, Manhattan, Chinatown in New York City. Founded in 1974, it is one of the earliest Asian-American, Asian American community organizations in the United States. ...

's digital archive.

Books

*Chi, Tseng Kwong & Richard Martin, ''Tseng Kwong Chi'' (Kyoto Shoin International Co., Ltd / Art Random, Kyoto, Japan, 1990) *Tseng Kwong Chi, ''Ambiguous Ambassador'' (

Nazraeli Press Nazraeli Press is a publisher of books of photography. It was founded in 1989, in Munich, Germany, by Chris Pichler and has been based in the USA since 1996. Nazraeli publishes roughly 30 new titles each year and has published over 400 with work ...

, 2005) *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 The Chrysler Museum of Art is an art museum on the border between downtown and the Ghent district of Norfolk, Virginia. The museum was founded in 1933 as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. In 1971, automotive heir, Walter P. Chrysler Jr. ...

Grey Art Gallery The Grey Art Gallery is New York University’s fine art museum, located on historic Washington Square Park, in New York City's Greenwich Village. As a university art museum, the Grey Art Gallery functions to collect, preserve, study, document, in ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

in association with Lyons Artbooks, 2015)

References

External links

Estate of Tseng Kwong Chi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tseng Kwong Chi 1950 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American photographers American LGBT photographers American gay artists American artists of Chinese descent Gay photographers Hong Kong emigrants to the United States AIDS-related deaths in New York (state) Chinese contemporary artists American LGBT people of Asian descent 20th-century Hong Kong LGBT people