UPCOMING COFFEE TALK
‘The Lams of Ludlow Street’ Exhibition Walkthrough
Thomas Holton
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UPCOMING COFFEE TALK
‘The Lams of Ludlow Street’ Exhibition Walkthrough
Thomas Holton
Join us on July 17th from 5:30PM – 7:30 PM for an intimate artist led through of 2024 Mid-Career Artist Initiative Recipient, Thomas Holton’s, solo exhibition The Lams of Ludlow Street and hear behind the scene details about the making of this 22 year long project.
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 another family’s experiences. The resulting images document adolescence, marriage, resilience, and the quiet, unscripted moments that define family life.
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 educator in New York City where he lives with his family.