Thomas Holton is half Chinese, and grew up on New York's Upper East Side. When he got interested in photography around age 15, he picked up his father's old Nikon and began making pictures of his friends, some of which went into his high school yearbook. His father was George Holton, a noted travel photographer and contributor to Time/Life Books in the 1960s and 70s.

After completing his MFA in photography at the School of Visual Arts, Thomas worked as an assistant to a busy commercial photographer. "One day I realized that I would never get on with my own work unless I stopped assisting," he said this morning at Sasha Wolf Gallery, where his first solo show was being installed. Because he felt disconnected from the Chinese side of his heritage, he headed to Chinatown, venturing into social clubs and neighborhood senior centers to photograph the old folks playing Mah Jong, and to the local parks where they practiced Tai Chi in the early hours.

Left: Steven, Michael and Franklin Lam, on Ludlow Street. Center: Shirley and the children, on Ludlow Street. Right: Shirley and Cindy with the grandparents, in Hong Kong. Photographs by Thomas Holton, courtesy of Sasha Wolf Gallery.

"But I wanted to find a more personal connection," he said. So he approached a social worker at University Settlement House, who allowed him to accompany her on visits to Chinatown clients. After a number of brief encounters with people who, for the most part, didn't want to be photographed, he found the Lam family: Steven, Shirley, and their three children, living in a 2-room apartment on Ludlow Street.

After a few visits, the Lams had accepted Thomas into the family, and the camera became almost like another piece of furniture. He went regularly on Tuesdays, hanging out with Shirley while she shopped, cooked, and constantly rearranged the family's belongings as the living space evolved from a dining room to a study hall for the kids to a bathroom.

In 2004, he accompanied the family to Hong Kong on a visit Steven's parents. The one photograph on view from that trip is remarkable. Although the elders live in a faceless high rise, the scene portrayed is a lot like the home on Ludlow Street: a tiny apartment full of belongings of all kinds, neatly arranged, and crammed with a face to face style of life that resonates with affection, and sometimes, with drama.

The Lams of Ludlow Street, photographs by Thomas Holton, opens at Sasha Wolf Gallery on Thursday, March 6, 6:00 pm and runs through April 26, 2008.