[4] Her photography series Projects (1997–2001) is her first and most notable work, where she camouflages herself as a member of the social and ethnic groups she poses with.

However, because she knew it was difficult for a woman artist to gain recognition––and because she didn't think it was particularly "cool"––she was hesitant to pursue a career in art.

Lee wanted to pursue an acting career instead, but decided not to due to insecurities about her physical appearance.

[9] Lee earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography at Chung-Ang University (중앙대학교) in South Korea in 1993.

After a year, she moved to New York City to study commercial photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

It was not until much later that Lee found out that her friend had made the list from that month's edition of Vogue, and that "Nikki", came from the model Niki Taylor.

[14] In preparation for each project, Lee would select a subculture, research it, and adopt the clothing, customs, and mannerisms of the group to fully integrate herself.

[8] The use of an automatic camera for all of the photographs in Projects provided Lee with a red timestamp, which captured the moment when the picture was taken.

[12] Though it was a lower quality camera, that did not really matter to Lee; she was more focused on investigating notions of identity and the uses of vernacular photography, instead of creating beautiful pictures.

Lee's projects highlight her underlying concept of how other people make her a certain kind of person and the influence of inner relationships on the idea of identity.

[5][21] Furthermore, critics have argued that her style of interpretive authorship is rather a representation of authoritarian power over the identity of other subcultures.

However, every image is cropped to make it impossible to directly see who she is with, leaving only a trace of the man, such as an arm or a foot.

The work was part of one of the museum's exhibitions titled The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography.

The project, described as a "conceptual documentary", alternates segments presenting Lee as two distinct personalities, one a reserved academic and another an outgoing socialite.

"[20] Through this work, she aims to point out the interesting concept of showing reality and non-reality at the same time, what is acting and what is not.

[15] Lee provided tracing paper to each of the street artists she asked to draw her portrait,[10] so that she would be able to later layer them together on top of a light box.

With this project, Lee asserts that everyone has complex, multilayered personalities, in which any small parts can be viewed by others of different ethnicities.