Known as Lee Xiaojin in Chinese, was born in Chunking, China in 1945 and raised in Taiwan. He moved to United States after he received his Bachelor of Fine Art in painting from the College of Chinese Culture. He then earned his Masters of Art degree in Photography and Film from Philadelphia College of Art and worked as an Art Director in New York until the late seventies, at which point he made photography his career. In fifteen years he photographed various subjects beginning with fashion, then people and eventually still life collage. Recent computer technology allows him to combine his various drawing, photographic, and fine art skills in one medium.

For his appropriately named "Manimals" series, Lee begins with stark portraits photographed with a large format camera, then submits these pictorial subjects to the digital wringer, provoking their unsettling metamorphosis into animal-like forms.