Thomas Holton, The Lams of Ludlow Street, and Eminent Domain

Since this is the week of The New York Photo Festival, I thought I’d post some work about New York. There’s a really smart show up at the New York Public Library called Eminent Domain that’s based on a New York Public Library exhibition of
the same title (on view May 2-August 29, 2008, at the Humanities and
Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street).

The show presents
selections from the work of five New York-based artists who have
recently created large photographic projects that take on the theme of
the modern city.The artists are Bettina Johae, Thomas Holton, Reiner Leist, Zoe Leonard, and Ethan Levitas.

I’m especially interested in Thomas Holton’s work; he’s spent several years documenting the life of an immigrant Chinese family, in a project called The Lams of Ludlow Street. I first saw this work in Aperture last year, but this show has a new component, which are the polaroids the kids in the family took while Holton was photographing them. These add a whole new dimension. I asked Holton some questions about the work, and about his upcoming projects.

I’m very interested in the notion you’ve used with the Lams of Ludlow Project in terms of involving the family’s children in the capturing of their own narrative, with the use of polaroid film. How did this change the nature of the project?

The use of the polaroid film evolved on its own as the project went on. The kids always stole the camera from my bag and banged out photos when I wasn’t looking. But I saved them all in a drawer and when I entered a particularly frustrating time during the project, I decided to revisit them and to stop shooting my own work for a bit. I was struck how their vision was sometimes so completely different from mine and intrigued by the idea of how we shared experiences together but had different takes on them. While i saw one thing, they saw another. This really expanded the narrative and made the project much more of a collaboration and not just a documentation. I didn’t want the project to be all about me. I became so close to them that it just feels natural to include their work too. After all, i was new to them too. I enjoy how my eyes go from my images to theirs, then back to mine. You’ll see things in one of my photos that remind you of something you saw in theirs and vice versa.

What is your favorite image in the series that you took and what is your favorite image that the kids took?

One of my favorite images in the one of Shirley watching tv while preparing dinner. She’s so intensely lost in the Chinese soap opera while the woman on the tv also seems lost in thought. It’s just a moment that we can all relate to, getting stuck in a tv show.

I also love the polaroid of Shirley’s bandaged foot; she hurt it on the stairs. While i felt bad for her, it’s just something i seemed to overlook photographically. But when the children make a photo of their mother’s hurt foot, it becomes so much more sympathetic and caring.

I’ve always been interested in people who are native New Yorkers, as so many people adopt it as their home base but never truly feel like it is home. What about this city signifies home for you? Is it the people, the culture? Is New York the place you always come back to? I can’t imagine what it would feel like to not have a country mouse type of longing. Do you have any of that?

I’ve lived in New York all my life; I’m a townie, just one of those losers who never leave their hometown! I just feel that I can’t live anywhere else. regardless of this fact, I always felt like a visitor in Chinatown even though i have 100% Chinese relatives living there. New York is home to me for many reasons– the diversity, most of my family is from around here and I love walking down streets that I used to roam around when I was a rebellious teenager looking for fun and trouble in the 1980’s. Photographically, there are so many stories here that can be told…you don’t need to travel across the planet to make interesting work. You can shoot in a tiny apartment for three years and come up with something interesting. I sometimes imagine living somewhere else but then I visit small towns or other cities and love returning here. Plus i have a deck so I can at least get some sun and air.



How did the show at the Public Library come about?

The photo curator, Stephen Pinson, saw my work in the 2005 Art and Commerce festival for emerging photographers and he contacted me and wanted to see more work. I firmly believe that you have to get your work out there as much as possible and then hope somebody sees it, likes it and makes it even more visible.

How has your relationship with the city changed as you’ve aged, and what other New York City photographers interest you?

As I’ve gotten older, I love exploring the city more than I did when I was younger. You appreciate the diversity and the endless creative possibilities. I also love the fact that I still get lost every once in awhile. It reminds me that I live somewhere so completely complex, a place always changing so that even townies can get lost.

I like Bruce Davidson’s work (brooklyn gang and subway), Arbus, Winogrand…the masters. There are obviously people making work about NYC now too. Basically I like people who reveal the circus that is this city.

Where and What do you want to photograph next?

I’m finishing up a two year project and just started something very, very new in Chinatown. I’ve been photographing my mother-in-law for two years (she lives in long island) as she prepares to retire from the same teaching job that she’s had for 35 years. Her present life is somewhat of a bittersweet reality, different than what she imagined 35 years ago.

I also just began to photograph at a ballroom dancing joint in Chinatown but have really just started… I’ve only shot there twice. Most of the dancers are middle-aged immigrant Chinese women but all the instructors are these immigrant Russian dance experts. So it’s this wonderful collision of cultures meeting to dance in this random place that can only happen here. I’m definitely curious about the joint, so I’ll keep going back at all times of the day. I like the idea of constantly returning to a single place and seeing something new every time. It’s what i did with the Lams, my mother-in-law and now possibly this ballroom dancing joint.