Nikki S. Lee

Lee Seung-hee (born 1970), known professionally as Nikki S. Lee, is a South Korean visual artist with a focus on performance, photography, and film. Lee often explores themes of identity through her work — specifically as it relates to others, rather than individual identity.

Lee earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography at Chung-Ang University (중앙대학교) in South Korea in 1993.

After a year, she moved to New York City to study commercial photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Lee chose her "American" name, 'Nikki' after she moved to America in 1994.

She asked a friend of hers to compile a list of American sounding names for her to choose from.

It was not until much later that Lee found out that her friend had made the list from that month's edition of Vogue, and that "Nikki", came from the model Niki Taylor.

In Lee's early career, she started as a photo assistant for the LaChapelle Studio.

She carried lighting, helped set up the studio, and loaded film as an intern.

Although she enjoyed working for commercial photography, she was drawn to make "something of [her] own", as she had desired when she was a child.

She quit her job in the fashion world and began to focus on her own work.

Lee completed this program in 1996, receiving an Associate in Applied Science.

Her photography series Projects (1997–2001) is her first and most notable work, where she camouflages herself as a member of the social and ethnic groups she poses with.

Lee now lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.

Lee was born in Geochang, South Korea.

During her childhood, Lee was exposed to a variety of foreign cultures through American media.

She developed an interest in learning about various cultures and their people.

However, because she knew it was difficult for a woman artist to gain recognition––and because she didn't think it was particularly "cool"––she was hesitant to pursue a career in art.

Lee wanted to pursue an acting career instead, but decided not to due to insecurities about her physical appearance.

She also wanted to be a filmmaker but her parents didn't want her to attend cinema school.

Lee thought she might get around that by going to school for photography, which her parents did accept.

Lee's most noted series of work, Projects (1997–2001), began as a graduation requirement.

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).

Additional projects not included in this publication were The Drag Queen Project (1997), and The Hip-Hop Project (2001).

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.

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.

After three or more months of developing the identity, Lee would ask a person to take a picture of her with the group.

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.

As Lee herself was in the photos, she had her friends take them.

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.

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.

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.

Some of the seniors depicted in The Senior Project did not believe that Lee was actually a young woman under her old lady disguise.

While Lee's projects appear completely unique from one another, there is a common thread among all of the subcultures she portrays.

She subsequently earned her Master of Arts in photography at New York University (NYU) in 1999.

During her first year at NYU, she nearly quit because it was so technical and documentary focused.

She disliked that she had to go out to the streets and take photographs because she did not like "bothering people".

In the years after, however, she became interested in the conceptual aspect of photography.