Living Small

Growing up in Knickerbocker Village and later in Warbasse I never had my own room. I slept in our one bedroom and my parents slept on a high rise in the living room. I thought I was deprived, but look at this family on Ludlow Street, just a half mile from where I lived as a kid.
from the nytimes of 3/16/08

Living Small, By BONNIE YOCHELSON
THOMAS HOLTON first met the Lam family in 2003 when taking public relations photographs for the University Settlement, an organization that has helped immigrants on the Lower East Side for more than a century. Like thousands of New Yorkers before him, Mr. Holton offered his services to the settlement house as a good-will gesture, but he also had a more personal motive.
Mr. Holton is half Chinese. His father, an American, met his mother in Taiwan after her family fled mainland China in the wake of the Communist revolution. Although Mr. Holton’s grandparents lived in Chinatown when he was growing up on the Upper East Side, he felt like an outsider whenever he visited.
When he met Steven and Shirley Lam and their three young children, Mr. Holton seized the opportunity to get to know them. Visiting once a week over several years, he became part of the household, helping with chores and celebrating holidays and birthdays with the family. In 2004, he accompanied them on a trip to Hong Kong and China.
The Lams’ apartment consists of two rooms at the top of a five-story tenement; on warm days, the roof becomes a playground. The children, Michael, Franklin and Cindy, attend Public School 184, a bilingual school on Cherry Street, and Mr. Lam, who speaks English very well, handles administrative paperwork for an import-export company.
Within their small home, order reigns supreme, and each family member knows his or her part. In a dinnertime portrait, the family forms a line, surrounded by neatly arranged rows of coats, plates and chairs. In another kitchen scene, Mrs. Lam washes the dishes while watching her children play in the bathtub, which sits next to the sink. In the softly lighted bedroom, the multicolored sheets and the Lams’ wedding portrait form a quiet counterpoint to the bustling kitchen.
Mr. Holton’s pictures are on view at the Sasha Wolf Gallery, 10 Leonard Street in TriBeCa, through April 26. Although he no longer photographs the Lams regularly, they stay in touch. Last summer, the family attended his wedding in Groton, Mass., and Cindy was a flower girl.