Tam Tran

According to Tam Tran, she trains her camera on “everything and anything my eyes see and love.” Tran’s series of photographs presents her subjects as multifaceted characters, who explore and experiment with their respective identities by taking on a multitude of personas. In the series Raising Hell (2008), the artist’s nephew enacts the typical childhood fantasy of being a superhero. He is featured wearing a costume of pajamas and a cape and uses a broomstick as a weapon. Each of the five photographs captures a different moment in the battle between the boy and his imagined backyard adversary. Seen from different angles, from above or below, Tran’s nephew appears alternately monumental and diminutive—a fierce warrior and a little boy. Through this collaboration, Tran and her nephew take on a variety of roles: family members, playmates, and artist and subject.