Alta Via 1, 2024
Alta Via 1 is a zine series by Adri Tan that documents their 11 day trek with their family through the Dolomites in Italy. Through photos, sketches, and diary entries, they recount their experience hiking as one of the only people of color on the trail.
5.5 x 8.5 in. handbound zines, 24-30 pages each
Wa Leng Wa Hor was published in 2025 by Bookmobile in thanks to the 2024 Booooooom Art & Photo Book Award.
This photo book is about grief, illness, and culture, in remembrance of my late grandmother Chong Ah Chin. In 2015, she was diagnosed with vascular dementia. I visited her in Penang, Malaysia, for the first time as an adult in September 2022 and then again in April 2023. I documented both visits through photography. As her memory declined, I began to compile an unreliable history of her through the memories of my family and relatives. She soon passed away in July 2023. This book will primarily contain images I took during my visits in 2022 and 2023, as well as a few essays I wrote after her death.
Through this work, I contend with the grief of forgetting in all of its tenses. How do you grieve for someone who is still alive, and what parts of a culture die with one person? As I recount her oral history and fill in the gaps and historical context of the era in which she grew up, I reconstruct an unreliable image of my grandmother that is somewhat hers and also wholly mine.
Fashioning a Sense of Self, Issue 1, is an attempt to reclaim and explore the identities of women and non-binary people of color through photography. The images portray young women and non-binary people of color in spaces recognizant of their style and complementary to the forms created by their clothes and bodies. The project began with an all-inclusive, open invitation by which the models themselves were to decide the extent to which they would participate and how they would dress. In this way, these models of color maintained autonomy and agency over the way they are depicted.
The project is accompanied by a zine that further examines the themes of this project through brief interviews with the participants on their relationship to style and fashion.
Fashioning a Sense of Self, Issue 2, is an attempt to reclaim and explore the identities of women and non-binary people of color through photography. The images portray young women and non-binary people of color in spaces recognizant of their style and complementary to the forms created by their clothes and bodies. The project began with an all-inclusive, open invitation by which the models themselves were to decide the extent to which they would participate and how they would dress. In this way, these models of color maintained autonomy and agency over the way they are depicted.
Each portrait was the product of an organic, collaborative experience. Over time, and even through the Covid-19 pandemic, a community of diverse individuals emerged, challenging the white-washed fashion media industry that continues to benefit from the oppression and exclusion of non-white bodies.
A4 175-paged zine
I Objectify Myself to Subvert Your Gaze confronts the sexual objectification and fetishization of East and Southeast Asian people. In response to my experiences at the intersection of racism and misogyny as a non-binary Malaysian-Chinese American, I design my own method of objectification to circumvent the gaze of the oppressor in the form of digital textiles.
This zine contains photographs of East and Southeast Asian participants of marginalized genders digitally manipulated into abstract, sometimes kaleidoscopic, patterns until the original body cannot be distinguished nor sexualized.
These textile designs serve as a mediator between the participants and the audience—In objectifying themselves first, they reclaim power over the perception of their own body and identity. Participants are encouraged to move freely during the photo sessions, exploring the lines and shapes of their limbs that make up each pose rather than focusing on how their body will look and be perceived under anyone’s gaze.
8x8 75-paged zine
Adri Tan (they/them) is a photographer and zine artist born in Minnesota and based in Queens, New York. Their artistic practice is grounded in themes of cultural diaspora, gender, sexuality, and class that constitute their own identity as a queer, non-binary Malaysian-Chinese American. They were a recipient of the 2024 Booooooom Art & Photo Book Award and last exhibited their zines at the 2024 New York Queer Zine Fair.
email: tan.adrianna at gmail.com
ig: @atangerinee
