By Samantha Pak
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
A self-portrait of Corky Lee during his earlier days as a photojournalist. (Reprinted with permission from “Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice”)
For five decades, Corky Lee (1947-2021) dedicated his life to what he described as photographic justice for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
Starting out in social services, Lee shot his first photos (on a borrowed camera) in 1970 while working at Two Bridges Neighborhood Council just east of Chinatown in New York, where BIPOC residents lived in run-down tenements. His work included organizing rent strikes, and his photos were used to educate and document residents’ living conditions.
Before long, Lee could be seen at crime scenes, protests, demonstrations, and more, documenting AAPI history—which now could be seen in a new book, “Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice.” The book is a continuous record of the Asian American movement over five decades, featuring about 250 photos, distilled from the hundreds of thousands that Lee took throughout his career, right up until his death on Jan. 27, 2021, from COVID-19.
“This book we edited is a rare documentation of Asian American communities and social justice movements over this long arc of 50 years,” co-editor Mae Ngai said.
The book was published on April 9, and to celebrate its release, Lee’s estate and Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) Seattle are teaming up to host an event from 6-7:30 p.m. on April 26 at the Wing Luke Museum. The event will include a conversation between Ngai and AAJA Seattle board member Celia Wu. There will also be a slideshow featuring Lee’s work, as well as the opportunity for audience members to ask questions, a book signing, and copies available for purchase.
“I think it’s going to be a really happy occasion,” said Ngai, who had met Lee in the early 1970s in New York’s Chinatown, just as the Asian American movement was beginning to explode and they were both radical activists looking to make “good trouble.”
A candlelight vigil in New York’s Central Park on Sept. 15, 2001. (Reprinted with permission from “Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice”)
Undisputed, unmatched, everywhere
According to the book, Lee’s business card declared him the “Undisputed, Unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate,” as he aimed to break stereotypes that AAPIs are docile, passive, and foreign in this country. He told stories through his photos and Ngai said he saw storytelling as a way to change the historical narrative—specifically, one that had long erased Asian Americans. From community events of all sizes, to people going about their everyday lives, Lee’s work showcases both the “Asian” and “American” sides of the community.
“Corky’s dedication to telling our stories was unmatched, and the book shows how prolific, and diverse, his output was,” Wu said. “Corky was able to create this powerful body of work because he was everywhere.”
This was how Wu’s younger self ended up in the book. She had attended a protest against Michael Cimino’s film, “Year of the Dragon,” in 1985 in New York and “naturally, Corky was there to capture the moment.”
AAPIs’ place in American history
Throughout his career, Lee’s photos documented important moments and movements in AAPI history. When community members in New York gathered to protest the arrest and beating of Chinese American Peter Yew, Lee was there on May 12, 1975, with his camera, to photograph another Chinese American man being dragged away by law enforcement. It was one of Lee’s most well-known photos and was published that same day in the New York Post’s afternoon edition.
Two women protesting against police brutality in 1975. The sign in Chinese read, “Down with racist oppression/Justice for Peter Yew now/Unite and fight to victory.” (Reprinted with permission from “Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice”)
In 2014, Lee carried out his quintessential act of photographic justice.
He brought together about 250 Asian Americans at Golden Spike National Historical Park in Promontory Summit, Utah. The site marks where the transcontinental railroad was completed in the 19th Century. And while Chinese workers played a major role in building the western half of the railroad, they were intentionally excluded from the 1869 original photo marking the occasion because of anti-Chinese racism at the time. On the 145th anniversary of the railroad’s completion, Lee reenacted the original photo with Asian Americans—including direct descendants of railroad workers—to record their role in one of the greatest technological achievements at the time.
And while Lee occasionally sold his photos as a freelancer, his work was mostly a labor of love, which he did gratis, Ngai said. For his day job, he worked as an account executive at a minority-owned print shop, where he worked from 1983-2011.
“Although Corky never was paid as a photojournalist, he was the ‘undisputed’ documenter of the Asian American movement from the 1970s up until his untimely death in 2021,” Wu said, adding that Lee was also one of the founders of the AAJA New York chapter and is listed in the national organization’s honor roll as a pioneer in photojournalism.
Lee photographed the AAPI community until the very end, capturing New York’s Chinatown through the early days of COVID-19. Taking portraits of people standing in front of their favorite restaurants, which had been closed at the time, as well as people protesting the rising violence against the AAPI community, he wanted to show how AAPIs were victims of the pandemic, not the cause of it, Ngai said.
“That was his last work,” she said.
Some of the last photographs Corky Lee took were of Asian Americans in 2020, protesting against the racist attacks during the coronavirus pandemic. (Reprinted with permission from “Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice”)