This feature is part of CULTURED‘s 2026 Young Photographers list. This year’s list spotlights 14 artists aged 30 or younger from around the globe who are united by a relentless curiosity and an understanding that the photographer’s most important job is identifying what deserves to be seen.
AGE: 27
BASED IN: New York & New Haven
Though Alec Dai appears in many of his own photographs, you’re more likely to see an outstretched arm or a mirror reflection than a stoic self-portrait. Beyond the domestic, landscapes as vectors for identity are the image-maker’s specialty, as seen in both his June presentation at Focus Art Fair with YveYANG Gallery and the work produced through the Yale MFA Dean’s Travel Fellowship.
Describe the purpose of your work in a sentence.
Bare it all and bear everything.
What’s the ideal situation for you to make work?
A mirror, a hole, a portal. A nude body, my dad’s work lights, a bulbous shutter release, and the whispering voices of horny ghosts.
What questions does your work ask?
What does it mean for my body to occupy a landscape riddled with violent histories? Who gets to be the shepherd of these histories today? What stories are sold and played back to me?
What fears does your work address?
A fear of being flattened into shallow fluff. A fear of passing from sight.
Who do you make photographs for?
My friends, my grandfather, the kids on the D train in Bensonhurst, the little gay boy inside me perched on a tan leather couch, sneaking a self-portrait on my parents’ digital camera.
Who are your visual influences?
Zhang Ding’s video work, William E. Jones’s found footage, Tseng Kwong Chi’s self-portraits, Leslie Cheung’s life, Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s lighting, Merry Alpern’s dirty windows, and Ren Hang’s absolute vision.
What’s the craziest situation you’ve shot in?
Naked in a dilapidated basement with a porn star and a really weird portrait of Jesus.
What do you want your work to achieve?
I came out to my mother at the Guggenheim’s Mapplethorpe retrospective, clueing her in through my lingering eye. One day, I’d love to walk my mother around a gallery of my own work.
What do you want to see more of in photography today? Less of?
More butts, more color, more thought, and more mixing of forms. Less referencing for the sake of referencing.
Meet more of CULTURED‘s 2026 Young Photographers:
Many Photographers Have Been Nominated for a Pulitzer. This One Was Nominated for a Grammy.
Photographer Arielle Gray Wants Her Subjects to Be Unafraid of Softness
For Queer Photographer Ben Jastremski, ‘Every Image I Make Is the Permission I Was Never Given’
War Still Rages in Ukraine. Photographer Conall Kearney Is There to Document It.
Meet the 30-Year-Old Mongolian Photographer Documenting Changing Borders
Sign up for our newsletter here to get these stories direct to your inbox.
in your life?
