Nikki S. Lee
Parts – part (14) – 2002
When I look at ‘part (14)’ from ‘Parts’ I automatically feel depression and loss due to the dark clothing presented by the artist ‘Lee posing with a male partner, cropped to make it impossible to directly see who she is with‘. Not only this but I also noticed the distance being shown between Lee’s body and the unknown man’s arm, followed by the angle of which her face was positioned looking away from him. I felt a few other feelings, such as; mystery, disconnection, emotion and silence.
After researching Nikki S. Lee’s whole photographic series of ‘Parts’ the image ‘part (14)’ has become a lot easier to analyse. Not that I didn’t get enough information from visualising it singularly but purely because the artist has put the piece so cleverly together that, myself, as an artist was eager to learn more. So by doing my research I ‘also experienced Parts of Lee’s life, situations, and contexts’. In ‘part (2)’ the only image that Lee is actually happy to be looking at what is, I guess, to be her husband, she is quite clearly getting married and there are no distractions. In ‘part (23)’ she is looking away from him and by the positioning of his hand he seems to be admiring her and trying to tempt her in with an ice lolly. In comparison between the two I can see that she is no longer the admirer but, if anything, he has to try other techniques for temptation as he is not enough. Moving onto ‘part (16)’ you see Lee pointing at a fish, yet again distracted, as if she is trying to get him to see things from her point of view. Finally in ‘part (208)’, the last image of the series, a shorter, elderly man is seen with grey hair. This I saw as her father. However the unknown man is nowhere to be seen and she is holding her belly, is this resembling a pregnancy and if so is he still lingering unexpectedly? Whatever the case the joining of arms to me resembled her clutching strongly onto her ‘old’ life.
To finish with a conclusion to my analysis, I believe the series provides strong evidence of the ‘existence and non-existence’ of those closest to Lee between 2002 and 2005. The main focus was her partner; of which created the strongest emotion and memories and this is why he was more frequent but she was always the colder presence within the photographs distancing herself and maybe this is why her clothing was dark in ‘part (14)’.
There is a lot of mystery in ‘part (14)’ which is why I wanted to find out more but the whole series is very mysterious. One mystery I could solve though and the gut reaction I received from ‘part (14)’ was that Lee, herself, was singled out due to unexpected physical and emotional separation making her the only focus.
Bibliography:
https://creators.vice.com/en_uk/article/z4y8zx/the-projects-parts-and-layers-of-nikki-s-lee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_S._Lee