My idea of home is when people are open and accepting — Eric Kt Lau
NAME Eric Kt Lau
ROLE Street Photographer, Creative Director
BIRTH CITY Hong Kong
CITIES LIVED IN Hong Kong, New York
Why did you decide to move to New York?
I was born and raised in Hong Kong. Generations of my family worked in the government so from a very young age I knew the way the government functioned. Around the age of six, I remember going to my parent’s office and observing them work. I vividly remember my dad’s work desk with two separate trays on it. One had a huge pile of documents with things that he needed to get done and the other one was empty. Throughout the day he slowly moved the documents from the full tray to the other one as he got the work done. All the documents were black and white mostly in English and looked rather boring to me. I knew I did not want this.
It was when I was around sixteen that I started to realize my interest in creative work. This was when I was in high school and began taking part in school activities. Everyone had a role from leadership to organizing and I got into design. It could be anything, from a Christmas party poster or our school newspaper or magazine. Working on executing these designs really sparked my interest and for those three to four weeks that used to be my world. I ended up applying to art schools in London and New York as Hong Kong is not a place with a strong culture of art and creativity. I felt it would be interesting for me to leave my hometown to pursue a creative career. I got accepted in Parsons and came to New York.
How were your first few years in New York?
The first year was very tough. I would say it's just a very different environment than Hong Kong. When we were in high school, we would try to maximize our time to stay together with friends or would be with family. No matter what we would be doing, we would hang out together until the very end before we went home. But in New York there is a strong sense of individualism and personal space. For someone who is from Hong Kong that is a huge contrast and I felt very lonely. Now after having lived here for fourteen years, I have started to appreciate the personal time and space and crave more of it. That was the biggest change for me.
Another aspect is diversity. I would say I almost learned more from the diversity than anything else here. The diverse ways in which my fellow classmates approached design problems gave me a deeper perspective of approaching creativity.
My Korean friends would tackle an assignment with a very different thought process than my Hispanic friends or my American friends. I think that's the most precious part of my New York education.
What is home to you?
My idea of home is when people are open and accepting. Of course, there are a lot of nostalgic elements in it, like my favorite food I grew up with or my train stop during school or my physical home in Hong Kong. But I think what home means to me is openness in a community.
It struck me most when I attended Burning Man three years ago. I felt instantaneously at home. My wife and I went there together and it was such a different way to live your life. Every aspect of our lives is somehow impacted with the idea of money. But at Burning Man that is dropped because there are a few principles that you have to follow when you’re there. You have to share everything, be radically accepting and be conscious of what you’re producing and consuming. Partially that is possible because there is an abundance of resources and in the everyday world that is not possible. However, the human interaction is very unique. Everyone almost immediately feels like a family. There are 70,000 people and you can approach anyone and just talk for the longest time, share what’s deep inside your heart. It isn't about networking or building long term friendships but more about listening, understanding and being together with each other. It was a seven-day trip and had a fundamental impact on what home means to me — the idea of like-minded openness and acceptance of people. I feel this is more important than the amount of time you spend together. You can get close to someone in a very short period of time.
Is there an object you carried with you when you came here?
When I was in high school, I used to assemble my own computer. It sounds complex but it was a relatively common thing to do. We had a community of computer geeks in our high school and we used to geek out about every aspect of the computer. For the longest time I had my tower computer with me, a mega gaming tower, which was very old school that I carried with me here. I never really used it because I had already switched to a Mac but it was like a backup. I had no idea if it was working because I had transferred all my data from it elsewhere but I felt safe seeing it in the corner of my apartment. Just being able to rest my legs on it when I was watching TV felt good and it was an essential component of my home for me.
I’ve had several phases where I’ve been obsessed with something. I had my computer geeks phase, then I had my musical geek phase and I also had a sneaker obsession phase. I would say I’m obsessed with obsession. For a certain period of time I get obsessed with one thing and dive very deep into it. Currently my obsession is street photography. I have been doing photography for the past twelve years. I got into it when a friend of mine got me to the streets of Brooklyn and I saw how he could grab someone from the street that he found interesting, gain their trust and spontaneously photograph them. The collaboration and unexpectedness of it really struck me. We often think that good photography is possible only with expensive cameras but street photography is more democratic because you’re using very little equipment and in my case for the past four years I've been using my cell phone.
Do you have memories of your first childhood home?
My memory of my first childhood home is my grandparents’ house. They lived in a public housing and as my kindergarten was very close to their house, I would spend most of my time with them. One thing that I remember most is the playground from across the house and my granddad and me visiting it. I could see the house from the playground and at the same time, if my grandparents were returning home from outside I could see them through the window. The layout of the house was very interesting. The living room was also your bedroom and the restrooms were outside the house. Even the way the old metal gate made a sound when we closed it is memorable to me. As a kid I found it fun to shut the creaking gate. Then there are other things about the house like the main door to the house had a slit. The door was a deep red color and the slit was orange.
