Project Description
Since last year, I’m using Google Reverse Image Search;
purposefully searching for images based on a self-portrait
I’ve made and entered in the search bar.
From its catalog of “visually similar images”—a set
of pictures relating to the original image’s color, light,
subject matter, and pose—I remake select pictures
from its suggestions.
Each “set” of images result from a self-portrait.
Tommy
Kha
These resulting photographs of landscapes, still lifes,
and portraits, to me, remain “self-portraits.”
In between these “visually similar images” are cutouts
from images, primarily drawing from my own archive
and physically cutting them out from prints I make.
I rephotograph them, sometimes with their real-life
counterpart or out in the real world. The resulting
picture is an image that is altered through the camera,
and seemingly a collage without any additional
Photoshop means.
Bac k gr ou n d
Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Tommy Kha is a Kha is a former Light Work artist-in-residence, and recently
photographer/artist based in New York City and Memphis. His published his first monograph, A Real Imitation, through
work has been exhibited internationally, including Ryerson Aint-Bad Editions. Kha holds an MFA in Photography from
Artspace, Georgia Scherman Projects, Aperture, ALLGold at Yale University.
MoMA PS1 Printshop, Yongkang Lu Art, and Kunstverein
Wolfsburg. Publications include Slate, the Huffington Post, AintBad Magazine, Hyperallergic, Blouin ArtInfo, BUTT Magazine,
and Miranda July’s We Think Alone.
Tommy Kha . Mine (I), Syracuse, NY, Entre Chien et Loup series . 2016
www.tommykha.com
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