Ka-Man Tse
American photographer
Ka-Man Tse (born 1981) is a Hong Kong-born photographer, video artist, and educator based in New York. Influenced by her Asian-American and queer identity, Tse primarily uses portraiture to tell stories about the people, identity, visibility, and place in and around the queer community.
Early life
Born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, Tse moved to the U.S. where she and her family worked in Schenectady, New York in Chinese restaurants. During the 1980s and 1990s, Tse made regular road trips to Chinatown, Manhattan which served as a surrogate for her birthplace. Her relationship with these three cities - New York City, Schenectady, and Hong Kong - is an ongoing investigation in her work.
Education
In 2003 Tse received her B.A. in Photography from Bard College and in 2009 went on to receive an M.F.A. in Photography from Yale University.
Art
Ka-Man Tse's work deals with visibility and representation through photography and film. She strives to locate points of intersection between LGBT and Asian and Pacific Islander communities. She mainly works with a large format view camera to take photographs that examine what is shared and negotiated between these two seemingly distant communities
Portraits and Narratives of LGBTQ Asians and Asian Americans
In 2014 she received the Robert Giard Fellowship grant for her project, Portraits and Narratives of LGBTQ Asians and Asian Americans. The artist describes this body of work as an examination of community and human agency through photographs, both staged and organic, of her subjects in public spaces.
The public source identifies “Ka-Man Tse” as american photographer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ka-Man, American and photographer.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Ka-Man Tse”, the useful work is to connect “american photographer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q50825806. VIAF identifies the subject as 1367159613646041030008. The Library of Congress control number is no2019099480. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2003, 2009 and 2014.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ka-Man Tse”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ka-Man Tse primary sources, Ka-Man Tse archive and Ka-Man research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ka-Man Tse”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ka-Man Tse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.