Reagan Louie

Louie was raised in a tight-knit Chinese American community, speaking Cantonese as his primary language until attending public school. His father was born in a Toisanese village in Guangdong, China and left at age 9, while his mother was a third-generation Chinese immigrant. In his first year of college, an art class sparked his interest in the arts.{{Cite web |last=aperturewp |date=2023-08-04 |title=Reagan Louie on Surviving the American Dream |url=https://aperture.org/editorial/reagan-louie-on-surviving-the-american-dream/ |access-date=2024-08-14 |website=Aperture |language=en-US}}

Louie has cited his experience entering school and the process of assimilation as a significant influence on his work. In the foreword of his book Toward a Truer Life, Louie wrote about the contradictory nature of his education and assimilation: “…if my education furthered some inner division, it also gave me the means to give voice to it.”Louie, Reagan, Toward a Truer Life: Photographs of China 1980–1990, Aperture, New York, 1991 He studied painting at the University of California, Los Angeles, until he began working with Robert Heinecken, who introduced him to photography. He earned his Master of Fine Arts at Yale University, where he studied with Walker Evans.

His first photography projects during the 1970s explored changing Asian communities in California; Chinatown, San Francisco;Rice, Mark, Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s, University of Mississippi, 2005, p. 230 Sacramento Chinese families; and the Japanese truck farms and shops around Sawtelle Boulevard in Los Angeles. In these immigrant communities, Louie recognized manifestations of his struggle with his conflicted cultural experience. During this period, Louie began working exclusively in color using a documentary style.

In 1980, Louie went to China for the first time. During his travels there, he exposed more than 300 rolls of film, from which he kept two pictures. In the book's foreword, Louie felt that he had to abandon preconceived notions to see China and understand his cultural heritage, clichés, bias, and convention.Louie, Reagan, Toward a Truer Life: Photographs of China 1980–1990, Aperture, New York, 1991 Over the next ten years, Louie made repeated trips back to China to document the change happening in the country during its modernization.

The photographs depict a wide range of subjects, from Maoist China's last days to the events of Tiananmen. Louie focused on everyday life to show the multi-faceted impact of modern China's transformation on its citizens and its environment.

Peter Hales, in his review for the New York Times Book Review, writes, "Toward a Truer Life is arguably the best photography book of the year. A decade of deep seeing gave him a collection of grave, perfect color photographs, pictures that far exceed the local circumstances of their making or Mr Louie’s quest for a past.”Hales, Peter, Photography Books of the Year, New York Times Book Review, December 1, 1991

In the 1990s, Louie worked on two projects. With the support of the Lange-Taylor Prize awarded by Duke University, he and the writer Tom Farber produced work about the South Pacific. And through the Indivisible project, commissioned by the Center for Creative Photography and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Louie photographed a community and an art project in North Philadelphia.Indivisible, Local Heroes: Changing America, Norton, NY. {{ISBN|0393050289}} During the 2000s, Louie was a contributing photographer for California magazine, where he produced several photographic essays, whose subjects ranged from Chinese Americans in California to farm life in the Sacramento delta.Seeing Deliberately, California, vol 119, no. 3, May/June 2008;

Roots and Branches, California, vol 118, no. 3, May 2007;Indo-chic, California, vol 117, no. 4, 2006; Chinafornia, California, vol 117, no. 1, Jan. 2006

In 1997, Louie returned to Asia on a Fulbright fellowship to study the history of Chinese photography. He was among the several photographers who covered the handover of Hong Kong back to China for The New York Times.Buruma, Ian, "Hong Kong, Feeling Flu-ish", New York Times Magazine,

February 1, 1998

Orientalia was a six-year exploration of the world of Asian sex work. According to Louie, "Orientalia" was a continuation of his journey to understand Asia and to evolve an integrated self. "As I began to photograph in Asia, I also discovered that my ethnicity was not the only filter I was perceived through or shaped by. I experienced an unfamiliar dynamic between men and women."Louie, Reagan, Orientalia: Sex in Asia, Powerhouse, NY 2003 Growing up in America as an Asian male, he felt both exoticized and emasculated. In Asia, with its inherent male dominance, he experienced more traditional gendered roles.

Louie chose to explore these dynamics in the Asian sex industry, where the relationships between women and men were visible and dramatically heightened. To represent the diversity of cultures, classes, and economics, Louie photographed in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, and Tibet. Above all, Louie sought to represent, without preconceptions, the complexity of sex workers' lives.

Orientalia sparked controversy and debate. For many, the non-judgmental position of the work was problematic. Critic Glen Helfand, in his "Salon" review, wrote: “Such images raise lots of difficult questions. Are the women being demeaned or empowered? Are they exoticized or exploited? The ambivalence is much of what makes these pictures interesting…”Helfand, Glen, “A Girl in Every Port”, Salon, September 12, 2003 But sex activist Carol Leigh of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) observed, "I was very moved by the show. The photographs showed these women as individuals, as people. I liked that there was no explanation and no condemnation."Hamlin, Jesse, "The Innocent Eye", San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 2003

At the same time, he was creating Orientalia, Louie also began a series entitled Asia at the Edge, a study of changes throughout major Asian countries, including North Korea.{{Cite web|url=http://media.wayne.edu/2008/08/27/elaine-l-jacob-gallery-to-present-asia|title=Welcome|date=July 2, 2020}} This project also brought him back to China. He saw China as a completely different society than it was in the 1980s, particularly the new millennial generation.

Louie began three projects: Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom depicts the effects of the country’s transformation over three decades through portraits of Chinese citizens. Before and After compares people and places Louie photographed across a range of time, from 30 years prior to only months before, to show the speed and scale of the country's changes. In APEC Blue, he juxtaposes events such as the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo with quotidian life.

Louie was a professor at the San Francisco Art Institute {{Cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220926194412/https://www.sfai.edu/bios/reagan-louie|title = SFAI - Reagan Louie}} and has taught and lectured widely. In 2014, he taught at The Three Shadows Photography Centre in Beijing http://www.mask9.com/node/183229 {{Dead link|date=February 2022}} and lectured at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.{{Cite web|url=http://sfaq.us/2014/10/the-state-of-chinese-art-education-and-contemporary-chinese-art/|title=The State of Chinese Art Education and Contemporary Chinese Art | SFAQ / NYAQ / LXAQ|date=October 2, 2014 }} He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Louie's photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group shows including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, the Ansel Adams Center, the Chinese Culture Center, “7th Gwangju Biennale”, “The Darkside” at Fotomuseum Winterthur, “Indivisible” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “China” at the Hong Kong Art Centre, “Capturing Light” at the Oakland Museum, and “New Photography 4” at the {{Cite web |title=New Photography 4: Patrick Faigenbaum, Reagan Louie, and Michael Schmidt {{!}} MoMA |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1602 |access-date=2025-01-08 |website=The Museum of Modern Art |language=en}} Museum of Modern Art.

Louie's works are in museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Louie's publications are listed below in chronological order:

• 2003: Orientalia: Sex in Asia, Powerhouse, NY. {{ISBN|1-57687-186-X}}
• 1995: Worlds in Collision: Dialogues on Multicultural Art Issues, (co-editor with Carlos Villa), San Francisco Art Institute/International. {{ISBN|1883255465}}
• 1991: Toward a Truer Life: Photographs of China 1980–1990, Aperture, New York. {{ISBN|0-89381-465-2}}

Collections:

• 2015: Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale, Catalog, Chongqing, China
• 2013: Arts for the City, Heyday Press, San Francisco. {{ISBN|1597142069}}
• 2009: Beyond Beauty, Duke University Press, Durham, NC
• 2008: Darkside I, Fotomuseum Winterthur/Steidl, Zurich, Switzerland. {{ISBN|9783865217165}}
• 2008: 7th Gwangju Biennale Catalogue, Korea
• 2005: 2nd Photo-Triennale Catalogue, Seoul, Korea
• 2001: Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography, 1850 to the Present, Norton, New York. {{ISBN|0393049930}}
• 2000: Indivisible, Local Heroes: Changing America, Norton, NY. {{ISBN|0393050289}}
• 1999: China: Fifty Years Inside the People’s Republic, Aperture, NY. {{ISBN|0893818623}}
• 1998: Hope Photographs, Thames and Hudson, NY. {{ISBN|0500542287}}
• 1987: One Journey to China, Aperture magazine, spring issue 105

{{Reflist}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20061211041442/http://www.themodernist.com/terminal1/louie.html Interview with Edgar Barrington, 2003]
• SexTV: Avoiding the Big Talk/Reagan Louie (film documentary), 2004 ([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1073022/ IMDb])
• [https://www.moma.org/collection/artists/3606?locale=en MoMA's collection of Reagan Louie works]
• [https://www.sfmoma.org/?s=reagan%20louie&type=artwork SFMOMA's collection of Reagan Louie works]

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Louie, Reagan}}

Category:1951 births

Category:Yale School of Art alumni

Category:San Francisco Art Institute faculty

Category:Photographers from California

Category:Living people

Category:American people of Chinese descent

Category:Artists from Sacramento, California