EIZO Student Award 2019 Winner: Jimmy Lee
Jimmy Lee 李展翹 is a documentary and fine art photographer based in Woking, UK, after being born and growing up in Hong Kong. Lee's work is mainly documentary and experimental narrative with his own experiences shaping his creative practice. His first experience of working was at a Hong Kong-based newspaper as a photographer during his time in higher education. After which he then pursued a Masters of Fine Arts in the UK. His project ‘Beyond the Current practise’ was published in Photozine by brownie publishing.
From 2015, Lee started to work on a personal documentary project concerned with the identity issue faced by people from Hong Kong. This project looked at the idea that there is no clear definition of what a Hong Kong person is and that they have grown up living with cultural references embedded in their society from both China and the United Kingdom.
Over the past couple of years, Lee has been researching the ideology, colonial history, collective memory, geo-political relations and the subjective approach in documentary of the Hong Kong people. Lee is also interested in the social and political issues of contemporary life around the globe, with his main focus being on Western China and various locations England. He sets out to discover the possibility of documentary photography, to expand its horizons and to work with projects that convey his personal concerns.
Jimmy Lee is a student from the University for the Creative Arts and his work that won the EIZO Student Award 2019, called 'Another Day in Paradise, focuses on depiciting the ideology of the British people today, and also the fantasy to the future. On choosing Lee's work as his favourite Nick Ballon commented saying: "I selected Jimmy Lee’s, "Another Day in Paradise" because of his strong and original viewpoint on a fractured British society. It's a project in the moment and I think he has set an interesting tone that captures a divided and confused country within his images. His rainbow of lurid colours adds an interesting tension and the unidentifiable people makes me think about where our country is heading and who is making those choices about our direction.”
