Why do we choose to leave home for a better place and a better life? Who do we become in a new land? What are the dreams and realities in the “Promised Land”?

Images of immigrants in multiple countries that seek to address those questions, captured by Kansas University associate professor Pok-Chi Lau over the span of 45 years, will go on display this week on the KU campus.

Lau’s “Photographs 1967-2012” opens today in the gallery of KU’s Art and Design Building, 1467 Jayhawk Blvd., and runs through Nov. 9. An opening reception is planned for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday.

Lau, an associate professor in the design department of KU’s School of Fine Arts, was born in a lower-class part of the former British Hong Kong.

His photography began with immigrant neighbors who escaped social chaos and poverty of mainland Communist China, includes images captured while he worked in Chinese restaurant kitchens in Canada and continues through his life-long search for diaspora stories in many other countries.