ARTISTS

Thomas Holton

Project Space (2025)

The Lams of Ludlow Street

Thomas Holton is a photographer and educator based in New York City. He received a BA from
Kenyon College and a MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts. His ongoing project, The
Lams of Ludlow Street, has documented the life of a single Chinese-American family living in
Manhattan’s Chinatown over 20 years. The project was published as a book in 2016 by Kehrer Verlag
and has been shown in the United States and abroad at venues including The Smithsonian National
Portrait Gallery, The Museum of the City of New York, the New York Public Library, and the
Photoville photography festival . The work has also been featured by the New York Times, Aperture,
The Guardian and many other periodicals. He has taught at the International Center of Photography
and was co-founder of SVA’s VisuaLife photography program, working with at-risk teenagers in
collaboration with the Children’s Aid Society in New York City. He is currently a photography
educatorin New York City where he lives with his family.

The Lams of Ludlow Street, a solo exhibition by photographer Thomas Holton, presented as part of the organization’s Mid-CareerInitiative. Spanning overtwo decades, this deeply personal body of work chronicles the evolving lives of a single
Chinese-American family in Manhattan’s Chinatown, offering an intimate exploration of identity,
belonging, and the everyday moments that shape our understanding of home.

Since 2003, Holton has immersed himself in the life of the Lam family, capturing both the private and
public dimensions of their world with an unfiltered, empathetic lens. What began as an artistic inquiry
into his own Chinese heritage has evolved into a lifelong commitment to storytelling—one that
reflects the complexities of family, migration, and cultural hybridity in contemporary America.

A lifelong New Yorker of mixed Chinese and American descent, Holton has long grappled with a sense
of detachment from his Chinese roots. His photographic journey with the Lams became both a
creative and personal act of connection, a way to bridge the gaps in his own identity through the lens
of anotherfamily’s experiences. The resulting images document adolescence, marriage,resilience,
and the quiet, unscripted moments that define family life. Presented at a time when Chinatown, like many immigrant communities, faces profound social and economic shifts, The Lams of Ludlow Street serves as both a visual archive and a meditation on what it means to belong.

Holton’s images remind us of the power of long-term storytelling—of what it means
to bear witness to time, change, and human connection.