10/13/08
Text: Nik Mercer
Photographers: Patrick Tsai
Most young photographers―no, make that photographers in general―haven't experienced the sheer drama that Patrick Tsai, a California-born Taiwanese twenty-something currently living in Tokyo, has gone through.
In the Summer of 2006, he met up with Madi Ju from China, and they arranged to meet in Lama shortly thereafter. The plan was to start a brand-spanking new life together and document the entire affair under the moniker My Little Dead Dick. Unfortunately, like all good things, their love came to an end a few months back, and Tsai (who now goes by Pat Pat) hopped the Sea of Japan to settle in Tokyo for a bit.
He is incredible. We couldn't resist but ask him to field a few of our questions.
Let's start with something easy here. How did you start photographing? What was the inspiration? How has that changed over time?
My older sister took a black & white photography class in high school, so I decided to copy her because she was much cooler than me and it also seemed like fun, but in the end my images ended up lacking any content and substance because I was living a really boring upper-middle-class suburban life.
Anyways, my photography finally started to grow during the Summer of my senior year in college. I bought a Lomo camera the day before my trip to Japan. I was planning on meeting up with my Japanese girlfriend there and stay at her place for about two months, but when I arrived at the airport in Tokyo, she didn’t show up. She basically ditched me and left me stranded in a foreign country with hardly any money. That night I felt like the world had collapsed and that I was in deep shit, but by the next morning I woke up feeling like a big weight had been lifted off me realizing I was in a new country with no obligations. I could do anything I wanted. So I spent the month traveling, meeting up with old friends, meeting new ones, sleeping in parks and strangers houses, observing weird Japanese people, and taking photographs with my new camera everyday. At that time, Lomo was fairly new, so I had no references on what a “typical Lomo photo” should look like, so I just took photos my own way. I found it to be much freer and more powerful than my old slow-ass manual SLR camera that I had been using since high school. It was like a revolution for me. So with the new camera and this new way of living, it was kind of the beginning for me photography wise.
After that trip, my life went back to normal again and pretty much my photography got stale again for the next couple of years. It wasn’t until I had been living in Taipei for two years that I finally began to have my own style. That happened because I met some really unique new friends who kind of had their own philosophy on life and lived rather recklessly. I hung out with them, fed off their energy, and learned how to edit those moments and translate it visually with my camera.
So those were two crucial moments for me. Looking back on it now, I realize that the quality and content of my photography really corresponds with the way I am living...
Tell me about your move to China, and, in a nutshell, what happened there. Something about a girl ... (grin).
After I graduated from university in New York, I moved to Taipei for the hell of it. About three years later, when my Flickr site was getting popular, I stumbled across the Flickr page of a female photographer named Madi Ju from China. It was kind of a major shock to see her work because it felt like I had discovered my other half. At that time, she was photographing young women in China while I was shooting young men in Taiwan. We ended up writing each other and talked about many things including our dreams and aspirations. After a month or so we felt that we were in love, so we decided to meet in between our two countries on a little hippie island called Lama in Hong Kong. That nine-day meeting ended up creating a landslide of photos, which eventually was the beginning of our romantic photo diary called My Little Dead Dick. After that trip, I flew back to Taiwan, quit my job, said goodbye to my friends, and then moved to Guangzhou, China. Before meeting her, I never even wanted to visit China. I hated that place with a passion from what I heard and read in the news... but love takes you to unexpected places... and eventually the country found a fond place in my heart it as well.
We moved a lot and did lots of traveling as well. The diary lasted a year from the first day we met to our one year anniversary. Our My Little Dead Dick Flickr site got kind of popular during that time and helped us get noticed by magazines like Vice.
We broke up in last June―a year after the diary was finished―which I guess was kind of a downer for people.
I'm really curious to know what you think the purpose of all these photos is. They're beautiful; they're eye-catching; they're really nicely shot; they're so curious. What does it all add up to in your mind?
Araki said that when he took photos of women that he was fucking them with his camera... It’s kind of silly, but I think there is something there in what he said... For me, doing photography seriously is like being in a relationship with someone. It’s something you are dedicated to and can’t give up. There are intense productive periods when you feel really high and there are complete dry spells, which leave you feeling terrible, pathetic, and completely lost. But I guess this analogy applies to all artists and their art though...
The photos I tend to take are all somewhat perverted but at the same time child-like and innocent. It doesn’t matter if I’m shooting my lover or some stranger on the street. I’ve always been into that combination for a long time... The photos can end up looking rather funny or just kind of beautiful. It just depends.
As a photographer, you've gone through a bunch of "phases." You've collaborated with others, been in different locations, and felt different things while clicking the shutter button. What was the purpose of the pictures, though, at the beginning (pre-M.L.D.D.), at the start of M.L.D.D., in the middle, at the end of M.L.D.D., and now, wherever you may be.
To put it simply, a photographer usually works off of someone else. They learn how to find and hone that energy from their subject like a parasite and its host... Most of my best work comes from meeting someone that inspires me and some kind of relationship is formed. The best ones just comes naturally.
You've been working on some commercial projects... a thing with Converse, for example. Tell me a little about that endeavor and any other current or future projects you've got lined up. How do you like working in such settings?
Converse re-bought their rights in China, so they wanted to give their advertising a total make-over by hiring new blood. The ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy, introduced My Little Dead Dick to them. I am super grateful to both companies for giving us a chance because they pretty much just found us kids off the internet and put a campaign costing thousands in our hands.
When were were approached by W & K, at first I was hesitant about accepting because it was commercial work, but those feelings went away as soon I began the job. I found that it was completely different than doing art photography. Shooting an ad that big was more like directing a movie than taking photos. And actually in the end, it felt a lot more rewarding than doing my own personal project.
Regarding the near future, no other big commercial gig is lined up because I pretty much gave up all my connections in China by moving to Japan. I’m starting from scratch again now.
You're now holed up in Tokyo. Why'd you make the move and how is the city altering the way you work, the way you live, the way you... love?
Madi and I broke up the day after the Converse campaign was finished. It started off as a peaceful breakup, but soon it got very ugly. I went to Japan for a month long trip afterward. Everyone knew Madi and I broke up because it was posted on the Internet, but they didn’t really know why.
Many people thought it was because I needed to clear my head, which was true, but the major reason was because I had fallen in love with another photographer from Japan and wanted to find out if I really had a chance with her.
When I was in Tokyo, I was interviewed by the Japanese online magazine called Ping Mag about the breakup, and then I just decided to reveal everything―even stuff that my ex-girlfriend didn’t know. I got a lot of criticism for that interview by many people, but like the My Little Dead dick photo diary, I wanted to be as truthful as possible about it. I was basically telling and explaining the end of the MLDD story for everyone. It was basically the last chapter.
After [that], I decided to move to Japan after my visit.
And about how Tokyo has changed the way I work and live... ? I am still relatively new here so I am still absorbing everything in as well as trying to find my own place in society here. And about love... I just met someone new the other day whose absolutely fantastic, but it’s too early to say how this new human being in my life will change the way I love and how I translate it in my work, but the one definite thing I can say is that I am finally really happy again. Tokyo is finally beginning to feel like home.
You always seem to be telling a story with your photos. What's the narrative to what you shoot and how do you create that linearity? Do you strive for it or is innate?
I guess having a narrative story line comes from my days when I made short films when I was younger. Filmmaking was the center of my life until I graduated from college then afterward, photography took over. Even though my films and photos are really different in comparison, when I look back on them now, I can see that there is a similar underlying story as well as humor that underscores all my work. In a way, storytellers are always telling their own same thing again and again, but with different characters and different settings. This is real evident when you look at films by people like Wes Anderson or novels by Haruki Murakami….
You've notoriously had a tremendous fan following on Flickr. Do you credit at least some of your success to the website? How is the Internet changing the way in which folks like you are perceived and responded to?
I was a strong proponent of Flickr for a while, but after they tried to reach a wider audience by censoring people’s pages (including our own) for mature content as well as laying passively down to China when their whole website was firewalled there, I became really disappointed in them. Soon afterward, I began focusing more on my own website and blog, but eventually I discovered that Flickr is still probably the best forum for people to view, comment on, and keep up to date with one’s work...
About the Internet, it can make normal boring people with a little bit of talent like me really well known to a wide range of people.
Sometimes you expose this crass, almost demented sensibility (truly, I mean no offense at all by this). I think that facet of your work might be part of the appeal of it, though. To see teenagers having sex on a tree trunk in a park or you lining without pants on in a hotel bed is somehow attractively perverse. Thoughts?
I think I mentioned that before in my earlier answer. I’ve had that sense of humor since I was a teenager and I guess have been developing it ever since. The most important part though is that it’s an more innocent and friendly kind of perversion rather than a fucked up one.
But it’s true... I am definitely a bit of a pervert. I guess Japan might be the perfect place for me then.
When I look at the work of someone like you, it's hard for me to believe that you do anything aside from photographing stuff you experience. What else have you been up to?
Living.
My Little Dead Dick's Flickr photostream
