Artist
Luigino Palu
Title
Nikki in Chinatown
Date2018
MediumSilver gelatin print
Dimensions20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
Framed Size: 29 1/2 x 27 1/2 in. (74.9 x 69.9 cm)
Framed Size: 29 1/2 x 27 1/2 in. (74.9 x 69.9 cm)
Credit LineDC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Collection
Object numberDCCAH2025.038
ClassificationsPhotographs
Locations
Currently Not on View
DescriptionIn the photograph, Nikki in Chinatown (2018), a woman runs her right hand through her hair and stares out at the viewer. The black and white picture shows her from the knees-up standing in front of stone steps—likely those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, located in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood. The image is candid and captured with a flash at night. The woman, Nikki, appears at ease. She may be familiar with the photographer, Luigino “Louie” Palu, who often spends months or years getting to know the people and communities he captures on film.
Palu is a Washingtonian and documentary photographer who has covered the wars in Ukraine and Afghanistan, political turmoil in the United States, the drug war in Mexico, and most recently the foreign and domestic affairs of the Arctic, where he has partnered with National Geographic on a long-term photography project. Palu also photographs the everyday people and places that make up the nation’s capital, as he did with Nikki in Chinatown, a photograph that alludes to different aspects of Palu’s work. In it, we see a snapshot portrait posed in front of a national arts institution that has exhibited Palu’s photography.
