The World Expo - Shanghai.

Continued from Part One over at TommyKha.com

The perception of art in Shanghai is astonishing me with its allure. People casually will discuss the process of art making outside the gallery if the opportunity presented itself. In personal evidence, American denizens are somewhat unaccepting with the idea—e.g. photographing a Redbirds’ Stadium automatically is one-fifths akin to making a car bomb for Time Square.

My first blogging internationally. Think of this blog as a prequel and retrospect as I adjust to living in the future, looking back on this year.

After participating in Tino Sehgal and Marina Abramovic’s performance pieces at the Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art respectfully, my interests in performance art began expanding. I want to include a sort of performance within my photography and thus, this series came about.

My family left China in the in the late 1930s. In a few weeks, I will be going back, to the Paris of the East: Shanghai. Naturally, I figured out how to interpret phrases that will come handy (I would have translated but it would be all Chinese to you):

"What are you looking at?"
"No, I am not interested in buying THAT."
"Hey! I am walking here!"
"Move out of the way! I got a horse!"
"Oh, where's the bathroom?"
"I speak Engese."
"Oh right, I'm Chinese."

In between several ongoing series, two projects, crashing couches and studying my thesis, I will be blogging here and of course, on my website: www.tommykha.com

Stay tuned.

Tommy "Sinoxplotation...isms" Kha

Valerie June takes on New York.

Hong Kong. Tokyo. London. Paris. Berlin. Los Angeles. New York.... Memphis.

"Falling's easy, you just fall. And landing is a lot like falling, you just land."

I definitely feel out of my body, almost like being in a film right now. I think I have said that being in New York for the first time is probably the same mindset Western photographers felt first coming to China. New York has its mysticism and I am awe with it. But being here, I am more appreciative of Memphis.

I've been in New York since the end of December. I've posted another blog on my website with similar photos but I wanted to still keep my LFM blog about Memphis despite me being in New York. Luckily, there happens to be Memphis-transplants here in New York like I am. My goal for this blog is post photos of my experience here as a photographer from Memphis living in New York. Check out what I've been up to after the cut:

One of our own Memphians, Tam Tran, a University of Memphis journalism graduate, has been accepted into the Whitney Biennial 2010 exhibition.