A Real Imitation

An early book by the Memphis-born photographer Tommy Kha (b. 1988), A Real Imitation uses staged self-portraiture to work through growing up gay and of Chinese descent in the city he still calls home.

Across 80 pages the book mixes performance, self-portraits and pictures of Memphis landmarks and interiors. Kha appears as a deadpan figure beside a much larger white man, next to a cardboard cutout of Elvis, or in bed between two parental figures. These are sequenced with what he calls test shots: empty rooms and historic sites such as the Sun Studio interior that stand in for home. Jon Feinstein of Humble Arts Foundation contributes the introduction. Aint-Bad Editions of Savannah published it in late 2015 as a perfect-bound paperback in a signed and numbered edition of 450.

Kha took a BFA at Memphis College of Art and an MFA at Yale, where he now teaches. Self-portraiture, his family's passage from China through Vietnam to the American South, and the Memphis landscape run through his later work. Half, Full, Quarter (Aperture, 2023) came out of the Aperture–Baxter St Next Step Award, with an essay by Hua Hsu and a conversation with An-My Lê. Ghost Bites was shown at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York. The 2025 Hayes Prize exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art was his first solo museum show.