Thomas Holton is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited widely across the country, including at the Houston Center for Photography and the Griffin Museum of Photography. The son of an American travel photographer and a Chinese mother, in his recent work Holton partially explores his connection to this heritage.

“Although I am half-Chinese and have spent a considerable amount of time in Chinatown, I never experienced a bond or connection to the neighborhood or the culture; I always felt I was a visitor. At the beginning of this project, I knew I wanted to get behind closed doors and photograph more than the stereotypical images of Chinatown’s street scenes. I wanted to experience more of the daily life of Chinatown.”

- Thomas Holton

Originally intended as a social documentary project involving multiple families that would move beyond the tourist’s vision of Chinatown, The Lams of Ludlow Street is instead a compassionate visual account of one family’s daily life. Holton began taking pictures of Shirley and Steven Lam and their three children, who live in a two-room apartment in Chinatown, in 2003. He continued the project over the next two and a half years. During the same period, the Lam children took their own pictures with Holton’s Polaroid camera, and these images are now part of the project. This photographic exchange broke down many of the normal barriers between private and public, allowing the Lams to become the surrogate Chinatown family that Holton never had. The result is a personal, empathetic, and moving portrait of the Lam family and of Holton’s own quest to better understand his “Chinese half.”