Tommy Kha is a photographer from Memphis. During his school years, he has obtained a BFA (in photography) from Memphis College of Art and a MFA (also in photography) from Yale University. The photos in this post are from one of his projects called "Return to Sender". When looking at the image above, one can tell that Tommy displays decent depth of field. For instance, even though the subject matter is in focus, the rest of the photo slightly fades into becoming out of focus. One can assume that the photo above was shot with an F-stop of 16 or 22. The image also appears to be "frozen in time" which would mean that a fast shutter speed of maybe 1/250 could've been used. When examining the picture closer, one would notice that it is a night shot with almost no noise. To avoid noise, Tommy would have to use a low ISO to get this type of quality. The observer should then take into consideration that the photographer could be using both a tripod, artificial lighting, and (possibly) a different type of lens.
When creating the images for Return to Sender, Tommy is involved in the scenes. That would mean that these photos are all, technically, self portraits. Within these scenes, he plays the role of the stereotypical passive, male asian. Tommy explores this role even further by letting the "other person" have control of how they represent this "awkward" kiss. One might say that this series symbolizes the controversial topic of homosexual/heterosexual relationships and how the differences between the two start to have little to no impact on the viewer because Tommy maitains the same composed, facial expression in each image. All in all, this project was meant to make the viewer question who is the photographer and who is the composed subject matter.
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