Abstract
This chapter discusses Grace Lau’s photography work over the past thirty years, which has focused on fetish/S&M subculture, Western perceptions of the Chinese in the nineteenth century, and death. Her work focuses on questions of British Chineseness only tangentially. However, all her work demonstrates her interest in the concept of photography as a constructed reality and in the active role of the photographer in staged performance. In this chapter, she discusses the concept of constructed studio portraiture and examines the role of the photographer as an active voyeur and facilitator who performs a significant role in using the camera as a tool to construct, enable, and contest particular gendered, sexual, racial, and personal identities.
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Notes
- 1.
Jessie ran the British Chinese Artists Association in its early funded years, where I worked to support the venture. We also ran workshops at Lambeth Chinese Community Association, where she worked, and, later, as Fusion Arts, we co-organized the New Moves conference in 1999.
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Lau, G. (2018). The Artist-Photographer and Performances of Identity: The Camera as Catalyst. In: Thorpe, A., Yeh, D. (eds) Contesting British Chinese Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71159-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71159-1_8
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