Horses Think

Nikki S. Lee, The Ohio Project, 1999

Nikki S. Lee gave a boisterous and entertaining presentation about her work yesterday afternoon at FIT. This was the second photo talk in the series, the next of which are listed in the side bar.

In truth, although I enjoyed some of her work in the past and thought that I “got” it, I was never the biggest fan for whatever reason. Maybe it’s that I never really considered her to be a serious photographer as she seemed to be more an “artist” who uses (or was it abuses) photography. I would see her exhibitions and while the work was satisfying conceptually, it didn’t feed my mind visually and I was turned off rather quickly. I didn’t like her snapshot method which struck me as too raw and loose and it annoyed me that she didn’t take her own pictures.

That was then but recently, I had found myself thinking of Lee’s work and was intrigued to hear what she would say about it. Either way, I always find it enlightening to hear an artist talk about their work, the insight alone is worth the effort. Nothing could have prepared me for her presentation though; I didn’t expect her to be as funny and honest as she was, it was very refreshing.

The presentation began with a proper introduction by someone (I don’t remember who spoke) who was Lee’s teacher at one point, I think at NYU. Lee was described as a shy student who had no interest in putting herself in front of the camera.

Once Lee took the stage, she made a point of correcting the assumption of her shyness by saying, “I wasn’t shy, I just couldn’t speak English.” That got a big laugh and set the tone.

Lee gave a quick rundown of her career, having moved here with her family from Korea and how she started out just wanting to be a successful fashion photographer and nothing else. To do that, she enrolled at FIT and then at some point briefly assisted for David Lachapelle. Although she never wanted to be an artist, she quickly realized that commercial photography wasn’t really for her. While working on an MA at NYU, her fellow students forced her to question the fashion work and she began to develop conceptual ideas that lead to the Nikki S. Lee we know today.

She talked about coming up with her first project idea and getting her first gallery show, as well as the gallery/artist relationship she developed over 10 years. I like how her whole artistic life began with some pretty straightforward thoughts. Having realized that fashion and clothing choices had a direct affect on her personality, presentation and experience in the world, Lee began to wonder about how the actual people surrounding her might affect her identity as well.

This thought process led to Lee’s most successful and well known work, Projects (1997-2001), which she began while still in school and depicts her performing and posing in snapshot photographs with various subcultures and groups such as punks, yuppies, hispanics, skateboarders and swing dancers. Seeing the work today and hearing Lee speak about the process gave me a completely new respect for what she had accomplished.

At one point Lee made a statement that struck a chord with me as it probably would to most artists as it related to how there is no border between working and not working. Meaning that as an artist one is constantly working on the next idea. She expressed the desire to work a 9-5 job from time to time as it benefited from having a definite beginning and end. This way she could just come home and leave her work behind at the office.

I’m finding it hard to sum up what she said or why it was so funny, but I came away from the presentation feeling inspired and happy to have been there. Nikki S. Lee seems to know that she has become an artist with a capital A but she also knows where she came from and isn’t afraid to share it openly and honestly.

As a side note, Stephen Shore gave the first talk a few weeks ago and although I didn’t write about it, I came away even more impressed with him and his work. He gave a fantastic and engaging presentation about his work and his artistic practice. I had heard that he would be kind of dry and boring and I can’t emphasize enough how much I disagree with that assessment. Shore was obviously a young prodigy but he is still one of the preeminent artists and thinkers of our time and contemporary photography has a lot to thank him for.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 10:54 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.