Tseng Kwong Chi
Tseng Kwong Chi
The bad weather is keeping us home today instead of camping at the Grand Canyon.
Meanwhile you may follow the late Tseng Kwong Chi as he went around the world.
Of course there is plenty of humor and irony in these photographs but seeing them in this context they also begin to take on an somber air of loneliness and sadness.
Tseng was an improbable pilgrim
In 1979, Joseph Tseng changed his name to Tseng Kwong Chi and embarked on a decade-long project called East Meets West (also referred to as “The Expeditionary Series”). With the camera’s shutter release in hand, he posed for approximately 150 images as a self-described “ambiguous ambassador” from the East, wearing the vintage Mao uniform he purchased from a second-hand store in Montreal, Velvet-Underground style sunglasses, and a visitor identification badge.