Reagan Louie (born 1951, San Francisco, California) is an American photographer and artist whose photography and installations explore cross-cultural identity and global transformation in Asia and Asian communities in the United States.
Louie was raised within an enclosed Chinese American community, speaking Cantonese as his primary language until attending public school.
His first photography projects during the 1970s explored changing Asian communities in California: Chinatown, San Francisco;[3] Sacramento Chinese families; and the Japanese truck farms and shops around Sawtelle Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Louie states in the book's forward, that he had to rid himself of all that he knew, clichés, bias, and conventions to see China and to understand his cultural heritage.
[4] Over the next ten years, Louie made repeated trips to capture his ancestral homeland's dramatic surge toward modernity.
Louie chose to explore these dynamics in the Asian sex industry, where the relationships between women and men were visible and dramatically heightened.
To represent the diversity of cultures, class, and economics, Louie photographed in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, and Tibet.
The ambivalence is much of what makes these pictures interesting…”[10] But sex activist Carol Leigh of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) observed, "I was very moved by the show.
"[11] At the same time, he was creating Orientalia, Louie also began a series entitled Asia at the Edge, a study of changes throughout major Asian countries including North Korea.
Louie began three projects: Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom depicts the effects of the country’s transformation over three decades through portraits of Chinese citizens.
Before and After compares people and places Louie photographed from 30 years to months before, to show the magnitude, speed, and drama of the changes to the country.