Photographer Thomas Holton Shares Intimate Narrative Of New York City Family Life To Inaugurate New Space For Baxter St At The Camera Club Of New York

Beyond the nepo babies, oligarchs, celebrity real estate agents, streaming series, and influencers who perpetuate a distorted image of New Yorkers living in opulence, there is a real story of crowded family life utilizing every inch of square footage.

The Lams of Ludlow Street, a solo exhibition by photographer Thomas Holton, which inaugurates the Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York’s new location at 154 Ludlow St., tells that intimate, honest story with integrity and nuance. The new gallery space on the Lower East Side is, by New York City denizen standards, located a short walk, on the same street, from the Chinese-American Lam family’s cozy home. Holton has immersed himself in the life of the Lam family since 2003, depicting their private and public lives.

Launched as Holton’s artistic inquiry into his own Chinese heritage, the project has evolved into a profound examination of family dynamics, migration, and cultural hybridity in contemporary New York, where the American identity is multitudinous. While the streets of Chinatown, with fish mongers, grocers, and myriad retailers displaying wares pouring into the sidewalks, offer a glimpse into the lifestyle of Chinese-Americans, Holton reveals the quotidian curiosities of interior existence.

Foodies paid close attention to Holton’s images of homemade meals, snapping iPhone shots of his photographic prints. Family Portrait (2004) depicts a woman in a sweater with white stars on a blue banner and a red and white pattern evoking the U.S. flag, a man in a USA sweatshirt, a young girl in a school uniform, and two young boys in public school T-shirts. The family stands behind their dining table, set for a meal, which is sandwiched between the kitchen sink on the left and what appears to be a typical New York City cast iron radiator painted white repurposed as an end table on the right. Above the family, an array of winter jackets and coats hang alongside a string of white icicle lights.

Anyone with a child in New York City public schools has likely seen similar households, as families often eschew space for cramped quarters in an acclaimed school district, where decamillionaires send their kids. Still, an occasional visit for a playdate pickup cannot express the verisimilitudes of a quarter century of family experience shared by a renowned photographer.

A New York City native of Chinese-American descent, Holton has wrestled with feeling detached from his Chinese roots, a common thread in the narratives of hyphenated Americans. Such struggles are amplified in a neighborhood like Chinatown, which has dramatically transformed from a compact, Cantonese-speaking enclave, expanding significantly in the 20th century with new waves of immigrants, largely from Fuzhou and Hong Kong. The Asian population has declined in recent decades amid a staggering leap in wealth inequality, soaring rents, and the widespread impact of gentrification. Most grotesque to longtime locals is a new neighborhood called Dimes Square, which refers to a small area between Chinatown and Lower East Side named after a restaurant that serves a “king salad” of kale, farro, radish, fennel, red cabbage, and almonds for $20 before tax and tip. As with all real estate scams, renaming a neighborhood boasting its uber-bougie businesses is a repeated trend to bloat rents which are already inaccessible to those lacking a trust fund.

The exhibition is presented as part of Baxter St’s Mid-Career Initiative, dedicated to supporting lens-based artists working between emerging and established careers who are often overlooked by funding and grant providers. Founded in 1884, Baxter St at the Camera Club is one of New York City’s oldest artist-run nonprofit spaces committed to lens-based arts. Today, the organization is an inclusive, socially engaged art incubator for lens-based artists, offering a year-round exhibition schedule, while hosting artist residencies, critique groups, and a public series of artist talks and workshops.

“When I stepped into this role 15 years ago, the organization was at a turning point. And together with Allen Frame … and the board, we really restructured Baxter St to be what it should be for the artists,” Executive Director Jil Weinstock told the jubilant crowd sipping Casa Lumbre cocktails at the June 4 grand opening of the new location. “Over 100 years, we really shifted from a membership base to an artist-centric organization, and that is a tool. That shift is really what brought us to Baxter St, and now that shift is what brought us here today.”