iactor profile and resume (printable) Lia Chang is an actor, an internationally published and exhibited photographer, an award-winning multimedia journalist and a publicist. Born in San Francisco, CA, Lia hails from a family of amateur photographers, and began her career in the arts as a teen, working as a petite runway model and an actor. She added photography and video to the mix in 1989 with her production company LIA CHANG MULTIMEDIA, where she produces online video content for the web, oversees the Lia Chang Archive and collaborates with artists, organizations and companies to build their photo archives. As an actor, Lia made her stage debut as Liat in a national tour of South Pacific with Barbara Eden and Robert Goulet in 1986, and last appeared in Derek Walcott’s Marie Laveau at the Castillo Theatre. She was featured as Joy in the Signature Theater Company’s revival of Sam Shepard’s 1965 Obie award winning play, Chicago directed by Joseph Chaikin at the Public Theater. Off Broadway credits include: Jeff Weiss’ Obie Award winning Hot Keys (Naked Angels), Raunchy Asian Women (Ohio Theatre), The Confirmation (The Vineyard), Behind Closed Doors (MCC), Power Play (Billie Holiday Theatre), Two Gentlemen of Verona, Underground Soap, and Famine Plays (Cucaracha Theatre). She has had roles in the films “Wolf”. “New Jack City”, ”Kiss Before Dying”, “King of New York”, “Big Trouble in Little China,” “The Last Dragon,” “Taxman;” and on television on “As the World Turns” and “New York Undercover.” She currently appears as Nurse Lia on the daytime soap opera “One Life to Live”. A frequently commissioned portrait and performance photographer, her fashion and performing arts background makes her a natural for being “in the moment” to capture the soul of the artists and the passion of their artistry. |
Lia's personal project includes photo-documenting her colleagues and contemporaries in the arts, fashion and journalism, along with two Chinese American astronauts, for a book project and exhibition entitled, “ASIAN AMERICANS: AT HOME IN THE GALAXY”. Her HERRINGBONE Backstage Pass with BD Wong photography exhibition was recently on view at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, N.J. This Fall, selections of her archive of Asian Pacific Americans in the arts, fashion, journalism, politics and space will become part of The Lia Chang APA Theater Portfolio in the Asian Pacific American Performing Arts Collection housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division's Asian Pacific American Islander Collection. Lia is the New York Bureau Chief for AsianConnections.com, and was a syndicated columnist for KYODO News, writing about arts and entertainment in her What’s Hot in New York column from 1995-2004. Her in-depth features and photographs have appeared in Vanity Fair, Gourmet, German Elle, Women’s Wear Daily, The Paris Review, VIBE, TV Guide, Daily Variety, Interior Design, American Theatre, Life & Style, OUT, New York Magazine, InStyle, Timeout.com, Villagevoice.com, Playbill.com, Theatermania.com, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe, New York Times and Washington Post. She writes about culture, style and Asian American issues for a variety of publications and her Backstage Pass with Lia Chang blog. Lia studied film and communications at Hunter College and photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP).
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She is a National Tropical Botanical Garden Environmental Journalism Fellow, a Scripps Howard New Media Fellow at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, a Visual Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute for New Media and a Western Knight Fellow at USC’s Annenberg College of Communications for Specialized Journalism on Entertainment Journalism in the Digital Age. Lia is the recipient of the Asian American Journalists Association 2001 National Award for New Media and the Organization of Chinese Americans 2000 Chinese American Journalist Award. Avenue Magazine named her one of the “One Hundred Most Influential Asian Americans” in 1997. She is featured in Joann Faung Jean Lee’s book “Asian American actors: oral histories from stage, screen, and television”. Portraits from Lia’s Asian American Pioneer Series are published in Chinese Americans: The Immigrant Experience by Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic (Filmmaker Ang Lee, Playwright David Henry Hwang, Fashion Designers Yeohlee and David Chu, Author Maxine Hong Kingston, Reporter Ti-Hua Chang). Her portraits of notable Chinese Americans can be seen at CAM in Los Angeles (Playwright David Henry Hwang); the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in New York (author C.Y. Lee, Bill Lann Lee and Gary and Mona Lee Locke); the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA) in San Francisco (Portraits of New York Chinatown after 9/11) and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (author and activist Michi Weglyn). Photographs by Lia Chang are in the permanent collections of the American Cancer Society, the Angel Island Immigration Station, Asian American Federation of New York (AAFNY), Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the New York City Health and Hospital Art Collection and the New York Historical Society. The Lia Chang Archive also includes Asian Pacific Americans in the Workforce and her fine art collection of Botanical Beauties.
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