Nikki S. Lee

Lee's most noted series of work, Projects (1997–2001), began as a graduation requirement.[12] Photographs were of herself with twelve groups of people, as published in the photobook with the same title: Projects. They were titled according to the subculture she transformed herself to appear as: The Punk Project (1997), The Tourist Project (1997), The Young Japanese (East Village) Project (1997), The Lesbian Project (1997), The Hispanic Project (1998), The Yuppie Project (1998), The Swingers Project (1998-99), The Seniors Project (1999), The Ohio Project (1999), The Exotic Dancers Project (2000), The Skateboarders Project (2000), and The Schoolgirls Project (2000).[9] Additional projects not included in this publication were The Drag Queen Project (1997),[13] and The Hip-Hop Project (2001).[14]

In preparation for each project, Lee would select a subculture, research it, and adopt the clothing, customs, and mannerisms of the group to fully integrate herself. She would try out many types of makeup, hairstyles, and multicolored contact lenses. Then, she either got her clothes from various thrift stores or places that people of the subculture she wanted to pose as frequented.[9] For The Seniors Project, where Lee had to appear as an older woman, she had to get her makeup done professionally instead of doing the look herself––as she had done with all her other projects. Some projects required a specific skill: for The Skateboarders Project Lee had to learn how to skateboard, and for The Exotic Dancers Project she dieted and trained for three months with a personal trainer.[15] After three or more months of developing the identity, Lee would ask a person to take a picture of her with the group.[8]

The use of an automatic camera for all of the photographs in Projects provided Lee with a red timestamp, which captured the moment when the picture was taken.[16] As Lee herself was in the photos, she had her friends take them.[15] She has said that the use of this type of camera made people around her more comfortable because they were used to seeing and/or using it.[12] Though it was a lower quality camera, that did not really matter to Lee; she was more focused on investigating notions of identity and the uses of vernacular photography, instead of creating beautiful pictures.[17]

Lee was open with her intentions as an artist, that she was an artist, as she went through this process, but not all of them believed her.[18] Some of the seniors depicted in The Senior Project did not believe that Lee was actually a young woman under her old lady disguise.[9]

While Lee's projects appear completely unique from one another, there is a common thread among all of the subcultures she portrays. One such is that each of the groups she chose to create an identity has a distinctive look that functions as a connection between the members of their community. Lee's projects highlight her underlying concept of how other people make her a certain kind of person and the influence of inner relationships on the idea of identity.[19]

Since the 1990s, Lee has spoken often about her motivations behind her work. She has emphasized the importance of group identity and social performance in Asia, as opposed to the more personal sense of identity in the US. In an interview with curator RoseLee Goldberg published in 2006, she stated: "Western culture is very much about the individual, while Eastern culture is more about identity in the context of society. You simply cannot think of yourself out of context."[5]

Due to the cultural stereotypes that her transformations utilize, Lee's work in Projects has received criticism of cultural appropriation and blackface.[5][20]

Lee began her Parts (2002–5) series during the fall of 2002, in London. The inspiration behind it emerged from thoughts she had as she was working on her Projects series. Her various identities in those projects drew out men of equal variety and it made her think about the way identity changes within romantic relationships. For Parts, Lee created stories around each of the heterosexual couples she depicted.[21]

In each photograph, Lee plays the role of the woman, posing in different settings with a man––a romantic partner. However, every image is cropped to make it impossible to directly see who she is with, leaving only a trace of the man, such as an arm or a foot.[17][22] This cropping directs the viewer's focus to the woman but evokes curiosity about the partner.[10]

When asked about the cropping, Lee said that it was not supposed to be reminiscent of a break-up; how one might cut their ex out of every photo of them together. Instead, the cropping was an aesthetic, and it was meant to make the viewer curious about the part which was missing and how the parts missing alter the person who is still pictured.[4]

One of the series included in Parts, called The Wedding Series was commissioned by The Jewish Museum. The work was part of one of the museum's exhibitions titled The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography.[21] It was open from September 23, 2005 to January 29, 2006.[23]

In 2006, Lee released the film, A.K.A. Nikki S. Lee. The project, described as a "conceptual documentary", alternates segments presenting Lee as two distinct personalities, one a reserved academic and another an outgoing socialite. It had its premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, October 5–7, 2006.[8] The film appears to be a true Nikki documentary, a young woman who is serious about making a second documentary about herself. Nikki No. 2, an impulsive personality, flaunts in the photo. Lee explained in an interview, "Nikki number one should be Nikki, and Nikki number two should be fake. But both are Nikki fake."[19]

Through this work, she aims to point out the interesting concept of showing reality and non-reality at the same time, what is acting and what is not. Lee decided on making a documentary, or a fake documentary, because she felt that it was the best medium to convey the concepts and common themes of her work.[15]

One of her most recent works is Layers (2008), which is a series of photographs that show layers of the portraits she collected from 14 different cities, across various parts of the world.[15] Lee provided tracing paper to each of the street artists she asked to draw her portrait,[10] so that she would be able to later layer them together on top of a light box. She only layered three sketches at a time––three from each city she visited––put them together with the lightbox and took a picture of the resulting mix.[8] The purpose of this project was to find out how people from different cities and of different ethnicities would perceive Lee and her features. With this project, Lee asserts that everyone has complex, multilayered personalities, in which any small parts can be viewed by others of different ethnicities.[15]

During her career, Lee's only work for commercial magazines was with BlackBook and The New York Times Magazine.[21] Lee collaborated with BlackBook on the theme of bourgeois, creating photographs of herself and her companion as a bourgeois couple.[4] This series was titled The Bourgeoisie and was later published, along with Paris––a series where various couples are depicted in Paris, with Lee as the focus––from Lee's Parts series.[21]