My father’s side of the family at the airport in Hong Kong before immigration

I’ve been watching this blinking cursor, wondering how to begin this post . It’s been just about 8 months since my last blog entry. Here’s the deal about my brief stint in applying to graduate schools.

In the winter of 2009, I decided on a whim, well, maybe more than a whim, to apply to a few grad schools. Requested recommendations, wrote essays, and got my portfolio ready for the applications. I thought this was the boost I needed and was a bit excited with a tinge of questioning. Well, I sent everything in before my trip to Hong Kong in January of 2010.

Spring came and the responses started rolling in. Both rejections and acceptances. Surprised at some, expected from others. Now came the tough part going to interviews and visiting schools. I narrowed it down to two schools, at opposite ends of the US. Stay close to New York City and live in Boston or make the leap to the West and live in San Francisco.

I visited both and met many people who encouraged me to go here or there. It was all really exciting. If I go to Boston, it will be so convenient to go home for shoots, if I do continue my photography on my family. If I moved to San Francisco, I can be challenged with finding new projects to explore, considering the large Chinese population already there. The professors at both schools were so kind and generous with their feedback, I was very much falling in love with the idea of going back to school. While I was genuinely thinking about the concept, some times I felt the whole meet and greet at the schools was very car salesmen-like.

While it all seemed like flowers in bloom, the large investment cost of school wavered over my head. Maybe it’s the way I was brought up, with immigrant parents who never splurged on anything. Maybe I was feeling guilty about going to school for photography and not say, for an MBA. Close friends, family, and professionals gave me their opinions but ultimately the decision was with me. Some say that an MFA is not worth all the money especially with a degree that doesn’t guarantee any more security in life, and actually will be more frightening than anything. Others told me that this was a great opportunity to grow as a professional artist and treat it as a moment where making/thinking/and questioning about art was full time. It could be a 2-year art residency or it could be me constantly wondering if this was a route willing to take, a $100K investment.

The gamble seemed too large. I would love to believe I’m a risk-taker in aspects of my life, but to be honest, anyone who knows me well will know I dot every “i” and cross every “t” before committing to most things. So when faced with such a large decision of going to graduate school or not, the romance of going to school as an artist full time didn’t attract the practical me.

While I sent in my decisions to schools, I did receive some phone calls from several concerned professors, people who I admire and whose work are studied by students everywhere. Money was the problem and lack of funding made the idea of graduate school pretty much impossible for me. I did secure several small grants here and there, but nothing that would actually make that much of a difference. I felt incredibly sorry to say I can’t go to graduate school because of money because it made me sound like I was putting the profession to the grave over something that seems so trivial.

I am still at a crossroads, where graduate school will always be there, it is my decision whether I need it or not to continue my work.

After the whole graduate school stint, I went to the Fotofest Biennial 2010. I never really wrote a recap but I will say I was asked where I graduated from many times, to the point where it was frustrating. Galleries, museums, collectors, and many others did not ask about my BFA degree, rather they were specifically looking for an MFA. I can understand how some may feel that having an MFA on a CV gives a bit of notoriety and secures the idea of that person being “committed” to the profession. However, starting a conversation right from the start with it is a bit tacky and to write an artist off right away from the beginning is rough.

Recently I was asked where do I fit in the contemporary art world and how do I contribute to it. These questions threw me off my chair immediately and I was scratching my head nonstop as I tried to think of answers. I don’t even remember what I said anymore and I might have spewed out some verbal garbage about using my photography as a way to discuss issues pertaining to Asian American ethnography and family politics. Add in a lot of “um(s)” and “uhh(s)” into the mix and I probably said something super water-downed.

This is the difference between getting a BFA versus a MFA. During the four years as an undergrad, all you are focused on is making work, experimenting, succeeding, failing, and by the fourth year, you’ll be lucky to realize what you want to do for the future. Professors guide you through trials and tribulations about experimenting and do not expect you to think about where you fit into contemporary art history. Hell, who are you to even think you can make it into a history book? You just need to work and be selfish. Just think and do your work. Figure out how you contribute to art later.

After a few years of sending jpgs and prints over and over again to competitions and contests, it hit me early on that photography is not all about me, it’s also about the person viewing the work. How do I match up with others? What am I lacking? But I’ve struggled and still struggle to find out how to my work fits into photography history. Sometimes it’s easy to ride the Chinese art wave but this is so one-dimensional and I hate it.

Like a confused teenager going through puberty, it’s always been about how and where do I fit in. When am I obviously Chinese, when am I uniquely American, female, young, old, smart, naive, successful, not up to par, etc. When I enter contests or competitions and have other Asian American work against mine, are we too similar? Is there only space for one? Talk about insecurities, huh?

I have a long way to go and doubt always cross my mind. My competitive nature keeps me grounded and I hope these questions of fitting in don’t stop. I believe the day I figure it out is the day I stop questioning. I’m sure I have other open-ended, head-scratching questions ahead of me in the near future so I should keep this post in mind and not stumble into the pitfalls of verbal garbage.

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn Houses, 2008, from Foreigners in Paradise, © Jane Tam

Just wanted to update you all on some upcoming shows and what I’ve been up to.

This Friday, November 6th, I will be in a two-person exhibition with the talented Shen Wei at Nemo Design Gallery in Portland, Oregon. I will be showing ten photographs from my “Foreigners in Paradise” project.

From the website:
Nemo Design is proud to present the work of acclaimed photographers Shen Wei and Jane Tam in Reflecting China: Gendered Visions from the Diaspora. Reflecting China combines work from Shen Wei’s Chinese Sentiment Series with Jane Tam’s Foreigners in Paradise Series. The result is a collection of work that explores issues of Chinese identity, gender, diaspora, cultural memory, imagined communities, longing and belonging. Both artists have been internationally recognized for their work. Shen is the recipient of many awards and was named as one of fifteen in the “new generation of photo pioneers” by American Photo magazine in 2007 as well as, one of the PDN’s “30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch” in 2008. Jane Tam was awarded with the Emerging Photographer Award at the Pingyao Photography Festival in China.

Reflecting China is part of the community programming for the Portland Art Museum’s China Design Now exhibit.

At the end of this year, I’m taking a trip to Hong Kong to continue my “Asleep At Sea” series. It will be about 2.5 weeks of shooting and I’m so excited for it!

After the new year, I am also showing work at the Fotofest Biennial 2010. The show, “Whatever Was Splendid,” is curated by Aaron Schuman, of Seesaw Magazine and incorporates an amazing roster of artists that I am most humbled to be included with.

From the website:
Aaron Schuman explores the legacy and continued influence of a “thoroughly modern photographic figure,” Walker Evans. “The striking similarities between Evans’s time and our own have become all too clear,” says Mr. Schuman. “Bearing this in mind, I began to investigate his profound influence on how the United States is still responded to, regarded, recognized and represented within photography today.” The artists in Mr. Schuman’s exhibition are: Will Steacy, Michael Schmelling, Greg Stimac, Tema Stauffer, Jason Lazarus, Jane Tam, Richard Mosse, Craig Mammano, Todd Hido, Hank Willis Thomas, and RJ Shaughnessy.

Reflecting China: Gendered Visions from the Diaspora
Two-Person Exhibition with Jane Tam and Shen Wei
Nemo Design Gallery
1875 SE Belmont St.Portland, OR 97214
Nov. 6 – 23, 2009
Opening Reception: Nov. 6, 2009 from 6-10pm

Whatever Was Splendid
Fotofest Biennial 2010, curated by Aaron Schuman
Vine Street Studios
1113 Vine Street
Houston, Texas
March 12 – Apr 25, 2010

Sara Under the D-Train tracks, Brooklyn, 2009, © Jane Tam

Two of my Aunts in front of an Arch, 1970s, © Tam Family

Somehow the summer seemed to have come and gone and August is already upon us.¬† It’s been a year since I graduated and a year since I’ve worked at my dayjob. I was talking to a friend recently and said it seems as if time speeds up right after you leave school. Reality hits you like a brick. Age is nothing but a number but for some reason, as each year goes by I see and feel how time affects those around me. My youngest cousin is starting college in a month, the health of my parents are on the decline, my once close friends are drifting away as their lives take off, and here I am struggling with goals, projects, life, and happiness.

Self-Portrait in the Kitchen, 2009, © Jane Tam

Turning the camera on myself is quite a¬† challenge since it’s a struggle to show the meaning of the photograph, as well as transform into a performer. I’ve been working on a few self-portraits here and there, not really sure where it’s going but sort of excited with the experimentation. I’m a very self conscious person. It could be due to my mother’s constant nagging and her refusal to have her kids shame her or the family.

This photograph, from my parents’ kitchen, was a test shot among over 100 tests. It’s aesthetically very different from the rest of my photographs on my website and certainly exudes very different emotions. Here’s hoping to working it out.

It’s almost been a month since my grandmother’s passing. This Sunday the family will be making a trip to Cypress Hills Cemetary in Brooklyn to do our offerings for her one month death anniversary. It’s a bit odd and it still feels like she hasn’t left us at all. But one thing my family has noticed is that emotions hit you when you least expect it like the times when we’re making fun of her antics at Atlantic City, of how she yells at my grandfather, how she’d ask if you ate dinner yet 3 times in a row, and all her other little sayings.

 

Eldest Aunt with her friends, © Jane Tam

What makes me sad is a bit selfish but I had so many plans for this summer to spend with her. She was certainly the easiest person I know in my family who can connect with my camera so quickly. I always look back into the few sessions I had with her as some of the strongest images. When I looked back at these photographs of her, I had wished I found photography earlier to photograph my other grandmother, who passed when I was 13.

Nelson Chan (whose work on his family inspires me as well) wrote me a sincere email telling me the story of his best friend feeling jealousy over his family images, after realizing he himself did not photograph his father who passed. Nelson did not realize what the feeling of jealousy was for his photographs until he told me he felt jealousy over my photographs of my grandmother.

 

Hong Kong, © Jane Tam

I have not photographed for 3 months now and since receiving Nelson’s personal email, I am ready to pull through. My grandfather is now looking into learning how to surf the internet, maybe swimming, just got back from Las Vegas, and is planning to go to Hong Kong in the fall. To get through the grieving, you have to connect with the pain to keep going. I’m planning to follow my grandfather to China and experience how he now lives his life without his love. It might happen and it might not, depends on his plans and depends on my financials. But China aside, I shall continue to shoot and make the best out of this summer.

Grandmother at Fort Greene Park, 2007, © Jane Tam

My grandparents on my father’s side of the family were the people who brought so many of my family members from Hong Kong to America in the 1970s and after. My grandmother used most of her savings to immigrate to the states. She helped my mother’s side of the family immigrate to the states in the late 80s and 90s as well. It’s amazing how the Tam family as well as the Yeung family are so indebted to this one woman. My grandmother had a slew of medical problems in the past but somehow her fighting power was always strong and she fought it like a tiger. She traveled to many countries with my grandfather, went parasailing, took photographs and pet a live tiger, went gambling every weekend or day at Atlantic City, and talked back to anybody in her way. She was a stubborn lady with quite a temper but she always knew to treat her grandchildren differently, like many grandparents.

As I’ve written in a few posts before, I’ve been busy with a lot of family issues and it was mainly the fact that in these past two months, I’ve been in and out of the hospital with many family members. We have a large family and even with family politics, we are all very filial and respectful. I can’t say I was particularly close with my Grandmother growing up but in the past 2-3 years of photographing her every few months, I started to develop a bond. It’s sad to realize that our relationship was so short but as least I have a few memories to hold on to. My grandmother passed away last Friday with her whole family by her side. She went peacefully and we all know she’s lived a vibrant and great life. She can now gamble all she wants wherever she may be.

It’s hard to maintain a professional blog without being personal especially since I am very attached to my family project. With all the sorrow and sadness of our loss, I am also happy to invite you all to the Nymphoto shows, one of which opens this Wednesday. Funny how life works; such polar opposites of emotions.

Fan, Laos, 2007, © Jane Tam

Sorry for the lack of words, I can’t seem to formulate much to say lately due to other things. There’s some big news in the future and I can’t wait to share that with you all.

There’s only 10 days left to Daniel Cooney’s Emerging Photographers Auction. Please take a look at the work and consider making a purchase. One of mine is up for bid too!