A tour-group traveler posing in front of the Empire State Building; a junkie punk jonesing on a dirty park bench; a mail-order bride photographed standing beside her snaggletoothed, shotgun-toting redneck husband -- Nikki S. Lee is all of these people, and then some.

"The Ohio Project" by Nikki S. Lee

The chameleonlike Lee, 30, uses elaborate makeup andwardrobe to assume an incredible array of personas in the themed self-portrait photographs that are her art. An exhibition of what the New York-based morph artist terms her "Projects" is now in at one of Tokyo's most consistently interesting contemporary art spaces, Gallery Gan on the Ginza strip.

The show features about 20 largish color prints, selections from work Lee has done over the last three years.

Photographs from Lee's "Lesbian Project" find the artist in little round wire-rimmed glasses, short-haired and unsmiling; in "Skateboarders Project" she is pictured as a happy-go-lucky street kid. In "Seniors Project" a wrinkly Lee is bundled in a big old overcoat, waiting in queue at the check-out counter of an East Village grocery store.

In almost all the photographs, Lee is seen in context among others of her assumed ilk. There is what looks like a girlfriend posing with her in the lesbian shot, while in a picture from "Drag Queen Project" the artist is sandwiched between a couple of cross-dressers on the tired sofa of a low-light burlesque club, while one of the spaced-out transvestites lazily licks her arm with a studded tongue.

"The Drag Queen Project (1)" by Nikki S. Lee

Were one unaware of Lee's modus operandi, it would be entirely possible to look at these pictures without realizing that they all feature the same person Lee's make-overs are that good. With the exception of "Seniors Project," the artist did all the transformations herself, adding touches such as tattoos and pierces and adjusting her posture and body language to fit the part. In some of the pictures, even her body type seems radically different.

She then has an assistant snap the picture, with the composition tending to a sort of snapshot aesthetic, the prints usually including the date printout in the lower corner. There is an understated intimacy here that finds Lee looking just like one of the gang.

Lee's work is more than mere costume-play photography: The artist strives to integrate herself into her target communities before the camera comes out. She skinned her knees learning to skateboard, and for her "Exotic Dancers Project" worked in a Connecticut strip club for two weeks.

"When I start a project I always introduce myself as an artist and explain what I am doing," says Lee, "but the other girls at the strip club were confused -- even though I told them I was an artist I think they thought I was a real exotic dancer."

Which, in a sense, she was, for a time anyway.

I ask Lee if her multiple identity projects might not occasionally make her feel a bit schizophrenic?

"No, no," says the artist, laughing. "Of course I have my own identity, but at the same time I do relate in a different way with, for example, my parents from the way I relate with my boyfriend or with other artists."

This is where much of the appeal in Lee's art can be found. The pictures are wonderfully telling of the way in which relationships and context inform the impressions we receive from people. The Korean-American artist counts a number of Eastern philosophers among the sources of inspiration for her projects, and says that the work has helped her discover differences between Western and Eastern identity paradigms.

"In Western cultures people tend to identify themselves in a certain way, with regards to how they think," says Lee, "while in the East I think people's identities are developed through their relationships with other people. The process is more group-based."

Part of what makes "Projects" work as an exhibition is that people can either marvel at Lee's different looks, or go a little deeper into the work and ponder the question of just what it is we are really seeing when we look at people.

Lee's future plans include a trip to Korea where she will become a schoolgirl, and a foray into the world of the Kyoto geisha. Judging by what she has shown us in this show, she will have no difficulty at all fitting in.