Alec Dai was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BA from Yale University where his undergraduate thesis examined the evolving landscape of queer activism and community in urban China.
Alec uses self-portraiture to explore questions of belonging as a queer Chinese-American across various physical and digital landscapes from the ethnic enclaves of Bensonhurst to online cruising grounds to historical Chinatowns in the American west. He is interested in the ability to construct an identity within a photographic frame and the way this mirrors how identity is consciously constructed, performed, referenced, and negotiated in the broader American landscape. To Dai, photography functions as a language that can offer a peek behind the curtains, an unveiling of performance to be cemented into static imagery and revisited forever.