TIME/SPACE: BRIEF AS PHOTOS
RESPONDING ARTIST 回應藝術家
LAU POK CHI 劉博智
P.55
Two Face Mao, Shanghai , 2007 兩面毛, 上海，2007
Pok Chi Lau was born in 1950 in a lower middle class area of Mongkok in Hong Kong. He emigrated to Canada in 1969 after secondary school where his interest in social documentary photography began. He gained his Bachelor’s Degree of Professional Art from Brooks Institute in 1975, and earned his Master’s degree from California Institute of the Arts in 1977. In the same year, Lau started to teach social documentary photography at the University of Kansas. Now a Professor Emeritus of PhotoMedia at the University of Kansas, he lives in Lawrence, Kansas, USA. Since 1968 Lau’s work focused on the topic of Chinese Diaspora outside and inside China covering large geographic spans in Asia, North and Central Americas. From 2009, he made multiple trips to SE Asia and Cuba where he devoted efforts to raise funds to bring 2 Cuban Chinese performers to China and conducted extensive research on 19th century Chinese indentured workers to Cuba.