We Love Tom Carter!!!

This is an anonymous fan's tribute page to Tom Carter -

under-appreciated book author, extraordinary photographer, and perpetual drifter.

We have been following Tom, his art and his antics for many years, from his political hell-raising in college to his travels across Latin America and the Orient; from his brief appearances on reality television to his recently published book CHINA: Portrait of a People.

Thomas Antoni Carter was born in 1973 in San Francisco. His mom is from Denmark + his father from Panama = tall (6'4"), dark and handsome. He studied politics at American University in Washington D.C. Tom was involved in campaigns until he decided to trade his briefcase for a backpack and hit the roads of the world. Most recently, Tom lived in China for 4 years and Japan the past year. No word yet on where he'll turn up next.

His new photography book CHINA: Portrait of a People was published in Hong Kong in 2008. It's REALLY good and we suggest it to anyone interested in photography or Chinese culture. For some reason it's not in any book stores, and we can't understand why this unprecedented book wasn't reviewed by the mainstream press or why it's not a New York Times best seller, because it's a real work of art and labor of love. NOBODY has ever traveled or photographed this many places in China, this is an historical fact, yet Tom gets no love from the media or publishers.

Being underappeciated, poor and homeless seems to be in the stars for Tom, and in a way it suits him well. Blind Date did a hilarious job of making fun of him for being a "drifter" (below), and even Tom takes jabs at himself for being "dusty and insolvent" in his published travel articles. Yet somehow, Tom scrapes by, teaching English in this country and that, selling his photos to such and such magazine, and now finally a book. Tom recently cleaned up for some a fashion photo shoot in Tokyo (below) yet ironically at that time Tom was living in a notorious roach-infested gaijin house near Shinjuku.

We hope one day Tom gets his dues and the respect he deserves for all his talent and hard work. Yet Tom remains good-natured, a friend to all his fans, and accessible even to this blogger. We recently dug up Tom's old TV appearances and threw them on YouTube, so, combined with photos stolen from his official homepage and gossip we accumulated over the years, we decided to memorialize him with his own blog-shrine.

So, buy Tom's book and spread the word. The world needs more artists - especially really intelligent, handsome, good-hearted ones like Tom Carter.

Videos of Tom Carter

The following reality TV shows staring Tom Carter were filmed in California between 2001-2003 prior to his move to China.

"Man of Few Words" Tom & Shiva Blind Date TV 11/19/2003

"Shiva's a dance teacher who's looking for a serious relationship. Tom's kind of a drifter who is couch-crashing at the moment and doesn't have a home address. At a dance studio, a buff dancer tries to teach Tom how to do a cartwheel, with disastrous results, an apt visual metaphor for this doomed date. It's next to impossible for Shiva to get a straight answer out of Tom regarding his past relationships. Has he ever dated anyone seriously? Is he dating anyone right now? Tom's response, "Well, like, what do you mean by dating?" Will Tom be more forthcoming? Or are these two on an express train to Chaste Hug Junction?"

Tom says he was a big fan of Blind Date during the popular reality show's peak seasons in the late 90s. While living in Southern California in 1998 and again in 2002, Tom reportedly interviewed at their studios two different times, but he was not contacted again until after he had moved back up to Northern California in 2003. Tom has confirmed that the filming was entirely unscripted and candid, and he was not prepared for his date's sudden deluge of personal questions about his past, causing him to become "withdrawn" and provoking the show's producers to pointedly make fun of him in the animation sequences.

Some other funny trivia: Tom says when the episode finally aired on television, he was too poor at the time to own a TV and missed the show, even though all his friends watched it and told him about it later. The blue button-down Tom is wearing at the beginning of the show was purchased for $00.75 cents at a thrift store just around the corner from the studio a couple minutes before filming began; Tom was crashing on a friend's floor at the time and says he didn't have many nice clothes to wear. Also, the yellow shirt he is wearing in the third scene is the same $3.00 yellow shirt his girlfriend makes fun of as Tom's "only going-out shirt" during 2001's A Makeover Story (the next video). Last, Tom's date Shiva is a professional dancer and "Ms. Fitness" magazine cover girl who has appeared in several Hollywood movies, including as a zombie in Evil Dead: Army of Darkness. Tom says they didn't hook up but was "disappointed yet not surprised" they never made it to the infamous Blind Date hot tub.

"San Francisco Scruffy" (part 1 of 4) Tom & Christie A Makeover Story TV Episode 260, 2001

"After backpacking through Central America together for several months, boyfriend and girlfriend Tom & Christie feel their relationship is stronger than ever. Being together non-stop for such a long period of time has allowed them to really get to know each other. Seeing each other dirty, unshowered and wearing the same shirt every day for 2 weeks has forced them to really get to know each other. Now these tattered travelers are home and are planning a get-together with family and friends to celebrate. They want to get a complete overhaul of their look so they can fit in with their contemporaries in stylish San Francisco."

This episode was filmed a couple years before Tom's Blind Date appearance (after Tom and Christie parted ways and Tom moved to Los Angeles). The story goes that Tom met Christie while he was living in Central California in 1999. They stayed in touch on email while he was backpacking in Mexico and Cuba, then Christie decided to join him for the third leg of his travels, down Central America. They journeyed together for 6 months, from Yucatan Mexico all the way to Panama, then moved back to San Francisco together in 2001. Christie was reportedly a fan of TLC Network and suggested to Tom during their trip to contact the show for a makeover when they returned home.

A little bird has told us that despite the positive reaction from Christie and all their friends, Tom actually "detested" his make over, especially the dyed blonde hair, and shaved it all off the next day. Tom also allegedly sold his new threads because "they were not clothes he would ever normally wear."

You can watch parts 2, 3 and 4 here:

A Makeover Story

A Makeover Story

A Makeover Story

Photos of Tom Carter

Photos of Tom Carter taken between 2004-2009 while Tom was living and traveling abroad in China and Japan.

Winter 2008 photograph of Tom Carter in Tokyo, Japan, taken at the infamous Shibuya intersection, incorporating time-lapse photography, which causes the crowds to appear as a blur. This photo was taken by Swiss fashion photographer Brian Walker, whom Tom befriended during their residency at Sakura House (an ill-reputed housing complex for "gaijin" foreigners). Tom and Brian reportedly could only take three pictures at a time due to the 15-second green light, causing them to run back and forth ceaselessly for almost and hour until they captured the correct exposure. Tom then returned the favor by using Brian's camera, a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, to take a similar photo of Brian.

Another photograph of Tom Carter at the infamous Shibuya intersection, taken by swiss fashion photographer Brian Walker. The story goes that Tom saw these two Japanese teenage girls crossing the intersection and spontaneously asked them to pose with him. Uniformed high school girls are iconic fixtures around Shibuya, and Tom says he felt their participation made the photograph more "definitive."

Publicity photo circa winter 2007 of Tom Carter for CHINA: Portrait of a People

Another publicity photo circa 2007 of Tom Carter with his Chinese girlfriend (we are SO jealous!!!), whom he credits as follows in the acknowledgements page of his photobook CHINA: Portrait of a People:

"...who for over two years has been my best friend, my guardian angel, my muse, my commiserator, my translator, my model, my talent scout, my photo assistant and my researcher; who put up with all the “why are you with him if he’s so poor” remarks from her unabashed fellow Chinese, who never hesitated to engage in fruit-throwing fights with dishonest street vendors, who held her own against local police during their hostile interrogations; and who as my “packbagging” companion during my second spin across China stood jovially by my side through a peasant riot in Hunan, a historical blizzard in Liaoning, a flood in Fujian, a typhoon in Hainan, traversed the scalding sands of Inner Mongolia and ascended the lethal altitudes of Tibet, all without complaint as I snapped away with my camera. Without her, this book literally would only be half of what it is."

Their photo was taken in winter 2007 by a studio photographer in Beijing. Tom reportedly was conflicted between using this media still or the following image of him in Tibet for the "About the Author" page of CHINA: Portrait of a People, as he wanted to "honor" the lady who helped him complete his book. However his publishers felt the Tibet photo was more "reflective" of his journey. (In a bit of comical trivia, the suit Tom is wearing is a knockoff Ermenegildo Zegna, purchased in Beijing's Silk Market for RMB 150 - approx. USD $20.)

Snapshot of Tom Carter with a family of nomadic drokpa shepherds encountered atop the 5008-meter Dongdola Pass in the Kham region of eastern Tibet during a week-long 4WD expedition from northern Yunnan province across east Tibet to Lhasa, as Tom writes in his published narration of the trip:

"At 5,008 meters we reached the highest altitude of our trip. At the bleak Dongdola pass we encountered a settlement of nomadic shepherds (drokpas) living in black tents while herds of emaciated yak-cows grazed the surrounding frozen pastures. These gentle people of an inhospitable land were dressed in simple hand-woven attire, but they were extravagantly accessorized in coral, turquoise and silver jewelry. These shepherds had seen few white faces in their lifetime. One drokpa family had yet to see a digital camera and they were mesmerized by the sight of their own images on the LCD screen."

Photo taken in summer 2006 by Eelco Florijn, a Netherlander who was traveling with Tom at the time. The camera in Tom's hand, a 2003-issued 4-mpx Olympus C4000, is what he (amazingly) used to shoot his entire book of photography, CHINA: Portrait of a People.

Fall 2004 snapshot of Tom Carter (with his trademark yellow shirt from his TV appearances) as an English teacher in Dongying city, Shandong province, China, where he taught 1,500 primary school students, grades 1-5. Prior to becoming a photojournalist and author, Tom arrived in China in 2004 as an English teacher; his experiences teaching English were published in the Wall Street Journal:

"I never thought I'd be an educator. I didn't like most of my teachers when I was a kid. Teachers the world over are typically low paid, overworked and underappreciated. But the fatigue and the hit on my income -- compared to what I might earn in the U.S. -- are what I pay for being part of a rapidly-changing China. As it turned out, I'm not so bad in front of the chalkboard -- I actually like it."

An interesting tidbit: the first-graders in this picture are holding up name cards of the English names Tom personally bequeathed to all 1,500 of his students.