Nikki S. Lee

Nikki S. Lee
On the March 2007 cover of KoreAm
Born	1970 (age 46–47) South Korea
Nationality	Korean
Known for	Photography
Awards	The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award

Nikki Seung-hee Lee (born 1970) is a Korean artist and filmmaker formerly based in New York City, now living and working in Seoul.

After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Chung-Ang University in South Korea in 1993, she moved to New York in 1994 to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. She earned her Master of Arts in photography at New York University in 1998.

Lee's most noted work, Projects (1997–2001), begun while still in school, depicts her in snapshot photographs in which she poses with drag queens, punks, swing dancers, senior citizens, Latinos, hip-hop musicians and fans, skateboarders, lesbians, young urban professionals, and Korean schoolgirls. She immerses herself into each American subculture and created an identity that is an extension of herself. With a simple point-and-shoot camera, she asked the selected group or passerby to record her. Lee conceives of her work as less about creating beautiful pictures, and more about investigating notions of identity and the uses of vernacular photography. The project was one of her graduation requirements.

In 1999 Lee's first solo exhibition took place at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York which was her exclusive representative from 1998 through the fall of 2007.