Tommy Lei

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

My work begins with observation. I am drawn to what is easily overlooked — fog settling over water, winter light flattening a facade, a chair left against a wall, a parking lot at the edge of a city that built itself around forgetting. These moments are not dramatic. They are honest. I came to the United States from Hong Kong as an adolescent, and I have spent most of my life since then learning to occupy spaces that were not built with me in mind as an immigrant, and as a queer person of Chinese descent. That experience of partial belonging, of being present somewhere without being entirely of it, became the lens through which I see. I am drawn to what remains after a moment has passed because I have always been the one arriving slightly after, looking carefully for a way in. My practice turns this inquiry toward the overlooked landscapes of everyday life: public, democratic, and almost never noticed. I am interested in what is left behind: the residue of human presence, the evidence of lives in motion. I work without staging or manipulation. I photograph what is already there, already waiting to be seen. At its core, the work is a love letter to place — to the cities and streets that hold both hardship and astonishing beauty in the same frame, often in the same breath. I reduce each image to its essential elements — light, structure, atmosphere — and let excess fall away. This is influenced as much by Buddhist and Taoist thought, particularly the principle of wu wei, as...

Artwork