Identity is not defined for me, it's something that it's in you and me and the whole world. From early age we copy the behavior of our parents and we try our best to be like them. As we grow older we put our fingerprint on our identity, which is not defined, it can change out of the bloom or it can change in a period of years.
This subject about Identity reminds me of my last semester project: ‘People’. For this project I took photos of masked individuals. I did this project because I wanted to show that people do have more than one faces. We can’t all act the same in every situation. For every task we need to accomplish we put on a different ‘mask’ or face as you’d like to call it. We don’t have just one identity, we think we are unique but the fact is that there are other people doing the same thing as us. In my opinion the only thing that separates us from one another is our DNA. Yes, maybe we have unique ideas but still, we are inspired by something, it’s not just a pure thought. And this is because it all started to long ago and we can’t really change it no matter how hard we try.
I chose to talk about Nikki S. Lee. In my opinion I think her projects are amazing. She wants to show that the identity of a person shouldn't be produced around other individuals. We should be free to choose who we want to be and if we want to become someone else for a day. At some point we start to run in a circle and so she added something to her life and made it really interesting to watch at.
She was born in 1970 in Korea where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography then moved to New York to complete an undergraduate degree in commercial photography.
Lee began her work by identifying subcultures that interests her, she researched groups and began to dress like them and adopt their customs. Then she approached the groups telling them about the project and asked permission to begin “hanging out” with them for a period of 3 months or more.
“Lee wants viewers of her work to explore new constructs for identity and call into question notions where identity is seen "as a unitary thing, ideally expressed through the manifestation of a single, authentic persona no matter what the context" (Martin, 2001, p. 17). The fact that Lee is able to move fluidly among subcultures and assimilate herself into different ethnic, sexual, socioeconomic, and age groups makes us question the permanency of our identities when viewed in different social and cultural contexts. Lee explains that in Asian culture, identity is determined more by the relationships one has with other people, rather than fixed traits that confine a person to one identity or clique.”
(Source: Art Education; January 2009, Vol. 62 Issue 1, p25-31, 7p)
Source : http://www.tonkonow.com/lee_projects_9.html
Source : http://duanenasis.blogspot.com/2010/07/nikki-s.html
Source : http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/portraiture-examined-at-the-ackland/Content?oid=1804289
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