I was looking through the bargain books at Newbury Comics last week, and I saw Nikki S. Lee's Parts and greatly contemplating buying it (I may have to go back). However, being reminded of her work got me thinking once again about the roles photography can take on for different artists (a discussion I opened in my recent post on Michael Collins). Though they both create beautiful images, Lee is on a different end of the spectrum than Collins in terms of intent and use of photography.
Lee's work (the most well known being Projects ('97-'01) and Parts ('02-'05)) explores the notions of identity. In Projects Lee takes on a variety of different personalities representative of stereotypical cultural and ethnic groups (including "hip-hop" and "senior", which I have shown, as well as "yuppie", "punk", "lesbian", "ohio" and many more), by infiltrating the intended group using clothes, hair, fake tans, a fake name, dance lessons, what have you. She then has someone else (typically a member of said group) take her picture, in typical snapshot fashion (you can even see time stamps on the pictures). In 2001 the NY Times smartly described her photographs as looking like "a collaboration between Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin" (if you don't know who both those photographers are you should look them up, they're important).
In her second major work, Parts, Nikki appears again, shot by an outside figure, with supposed romantic interests, on what appear to be dates. The most interesting thing however, is that the men have been cut from the images (as shown by missing pieces of a border suggestive of convenience store printing; a brilliant touch), leaving nothing but traces -a hand, the top of a head- that the men had been in the photo at all. The pictures could be real, every girl has some picture of her and a guy who she'd like to cut out. The series continues Lee's exploration of identity, asking how we form our sense of identity based on people present (or absent) in our lives, particularly ones we are romantically connected to.
Lee's more recent work continues to explore issues of identity, such as in Layers ('07) where she travelled to different countries and had people sketch her, then layered and photographed the sketches together using lightboxes, creating an interesting conversation about the way people from different cultures represent her Korean features - the sketches never end up looking like Nikki. All her works are very interesting, yet maintain a level of visual interestingness and beauty.
To quickly wrap this up and bring it back to where I started, I just like to appreciate the contrast in the way Collins and Nikki use photography extremely effectively to accomplish two different means (and with two very different yet equally interesting and beautiful products). In thinking about Nikki's work, it must be considered that she is not taking the photographs herself, and what the performative aspect that is so heavily present means in relation to the still image products (all this opposed to Collins' belief in straight image-making). I believe that much of their effectiveness as photographers lies in their belief in the power of the form of photography to which they ascribe.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (gallery that represents Nikki)
Leslie Tonkonow gallery (good base selection of images)
Shopping With - Nikki S. Lee; Dressing the Part Is Her Art (good NY Times article from 2001 about Projects)
Now In Moving Pictures: The Multitudes of Nikki S. Lee (good NY Times article from 2006 about Lee's video work)
images: various sources, c. Nikki S. Lee
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