Nikki Lee
Nikki Lee was born in Korea in 1970 and now lives in New York City. Lee earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts at Chung-Ang University, in South Korea in 1993 and continued her studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Lee then matriculated at New York University completing a Masters of Arts in photography. Lee’s photographic series have often dealt with looking at people’s identity and social behavior.
In 1997 while still attending NYU, Lee began “Projects”, a series of photographs, which consisted of a snap shot quality. Projects contained Lee who posed with different social groups consisting of punks, Hispanics, skateboarders, Hip-hop musicians and more. Lee would befriend a specific social group, become comfortable with them, and then take portraits of herself embraced in their social group. “Her use of the snapshot aesthetic is partly what convinces us that she belongs—along with her uncanny ability to strike the right pose.” Another interesting piece Lee produced was “Parts” in 2005, which included a male (significant other) and Lee posing. Each photograph was cropped so that the viewer cannot identify Lee’s companion in the picture.
Lee’s work attracts me because of the snapshot quality of her images. I found it interesting that Nikki Lee does not actually take all of her photographs. To achieve the snap shot quality in her “Projects” series Lee asked her friends to take the photograph while she was in character with different social groups. Lee in order to attain the desire she wanted did not use a professional camera to capture these images. Instead she used a simple point and shoot camera. For my project I have recently been researching snapshot images and the quality of them, trying to figure out how I can make my images have a similar characteristic. I also am interested in Nikki Lee’s fascination with people and their social behavior. I am currently investigating women, in their comfort zone, and the area that they find themselves in or attached to all day.
Gallery: I could not find Nikki Lee’s most recent gallery showing however she has shown work at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL.
“I make a kind of art that seems very simple at first, but once you peel off the layers you find many stories inside it.”—Nikki Lee
Kino, Carol. 1 October, 2006. 7 February 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/arts/design/01kino.html
Nikki Lee. Museum of Contemporary Photography. http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/lee_nikki_s.php
Parts, The Men are missing, Nikki Lee, Color print
Parts, Nikki Lee, Color Print
Projects: Senior Project, Nikki Lee, Color Print
*Could not find sizes of images*
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