Tommy Lei
Tommy Lei (b. 1988) is a visual artist based in Los Angeles. His photographic practice is concerned with stillness, diasporic memory, and the perceptual conditions of liminal space — tracing the tensions between displacement and arrival, presence and dissolution, through sustained attention to the emotional frequency and surfaces of landscapes and happenstances. Informed by Buddhist contemplative philosophy and the Taoist principle of wu wei, Lei's images occupy the threshold between external environment and interior experience — where time appears suspended and meaning remains deliberately unresolved. His public and civic commissions include work for JP Morgan and LA County Civic Arts. He has exhibited at Bit Basel, Miami Art Week (2025), the Pasadena Museum of History (2025), and the Zingst Photo Festival, Germany (2026). His photographs are held in private collections in the United States, France, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
Uncanny happenstance. Mop Meeting, 2025, from Remnants.
Built to connect people, now connecting to nothing. Disconnected (2018) was found split between a blue door and amber…
The mirror remembers no one. Self Portrait (2017) is the self that steps away before the picture is taken. What you see…
Like a phoenix rising above the ashes under infrared, this mature cactus embodies infinite life right outside of a Los…
Found (2025). Altadena, CA, post Eaton Fire. Eleven homes burned in our immediate neighborhood. A chair I found on my…
A dimmed light hovers and illuminates above Apt 285.…
Two koi dissolve into fog — not lost, but released. …
As I gazed at the cracked ceiling above, a dove ascends into a mid-flight surprise. …
Accidentally here, already brilliant.…
A building called Dream Center, behind a fence, beside graffiti, under a sky that doesn't care either way. The name…
Some things are protected by being hidden. Veiled Roses, 2025, depict blooms wrapped in translucent cloth, still…
Marriage — what a room remembers long after the people have gone.…
Abandonment leaves marks. But so does resilience. Every closed door holds a world on the other side. The Red Door is…
The show is over. The audience, gone. Audience, 2022, finds beauty in what remains — two towers of empty chairs leaning…
One small orange sphere. An infinite sea. A sky that can't decide between fire and calm. Ball Drop is about scale — how…
These hands have pressed a thousand oranges, in a single day. Time quietly ticks and compresses in this part of the…
Night doesn't just fall — it ignites. Embers was made in the dark heart of a bar, where fire is ritual and light is…
A scooter is abandoned under red lanterns and its casted shadows.…
A feral tabby cat emerge from darkness, hovering between reality and apparition. Wandering the edges of suburbs, it…
Two shopping carts found love in a parking lot.
The Sahara erases human presence almost as fast as we can leave it. Yet here — a table, four chairs, footprints in the…
Benches (2022) …