Ongoing Projects
- Previous Projects
- Fake Fashion
- Give Me 1 Minute
- Commissioned Work
Portrait/Fashion Photographer and Visual Artist
Joy Island Lei is a Portrait/Fashion Photographer and Visual Artist currently based between Beijing and New York.
She received her Master’s Degree in Digital Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2025.
Since 2009, she has worked for clients like Nike, Canon, Benefit, and Huawei, magazines like Cosmopolitan China, L’Officiel China, and Timeout Beijing, doing commercial, fashion, and portrait photography.
Her works often focus on the emotions of specific groups, blending bold colors, fashion aesthetics, and personal narratives to present a distinct female perspective. For example, since 2009, she has been dedicated to her personal project Give Me 1 Minute, spending over a decade documenting the faces of more than one hundred young people in China, presenting a post-pop style collective portrait of contemporary youth from an intimate perspective.
In 2025, she launched a new photography project in New York focusing on Asian women’s situations and migration stories, with the works included in her new book Pink Fantasy, which will be exhibited at the SVA Gramercy Gallery in Manhattan in September of the same year.
Joy Island Lei
Photo by Roca Beijing Gallery
Always looking for co-creation in New York and beyond!
Feel free to email me at joyislandstudio@gmail.com
and follow me on Instagram @joyisland 🍎🫰
Always looking for co-creation in New York and beyond!
Feel free to email me at joyislandstudio@gmail.com
and follow me on Instagram @joyisland 🍎🫰