Gift of the artist in honor of his son, Ralston Peregrine Louie, Class of 2014, M.2014.13.2

Reagan Louie is an American photographer and a professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. Known for his portraits, Louie creates work that deals with his own identity as a Chinese American as well as the changing cultural landscape in Asia in the wake of financial and technological advancement, globalization, and Western influence.

These themes are evident in his photographic series Sex Work in Asia, a suite of seventy images compiled over the course of six years, during which Louie traveled through Asia exploring the world of brothels and nightclubs. The resulting photographs document his journey and serve as personal portraits of the women he met.

The bold imagery of Suzie, Hong Kong; Room with TV, Hong Kong; and Betel Nut Stand, Taiwan confronts stereotypes and power dynamics, and promotes female agency.  Intimate, revealing, and unsettling, the images raise questions about the representation and objectification of the female body without offering an explicit moral argument or judgment.