Corky Lee’s photography, which he viewed as an extension of his activism, helped Asian-Americans recognize their shared yearnings and struggles.
Corky Lee often described his life’s work as “photographing Asian Pacific Americans.” It was a simple passion that could take him anywhere. For nearly fifty years, New Yorkers never knew where they might run into Lee and his camera: a museum gala or a tenants’ rights meeting, construction sites or local laundries, youth basketball games or poetry readings, community fairs, concerts, or protests.
Chinatown in the seventies was undergoing significant shifts that were often imperceptible to those outside of it. The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 created new flows of Asian immigrants, who didn’t always share immediate affinities with those who were already here. But Lee’s photography, which he viewed as an extension of his activism, helped Asian-Americans recognize their shared yearnings and struggles.
thousands of Chinatown residents took to the streets to protest a pattern of police brutality in their communityLee took some of the only photos that survive of Chinatown back when it was a nexus of activism: protests against the Vietnam War, or police brutality, or miserly bosses and cruel landlords.Over the past few days on social media, Lee’s longtime friends and admirers have talked about how Lee “helped us see ourselves.
Lee frequently spoke about the moment he grasped the powerful relationship between photography and historical memory. He was in junior high, and his class was studying the construction of the transcontinental railroad, an undertaking that involved tens of thousands of impoverished Chinese migrant laborers. The railroads were one of the principal reasons that Chinese communities took root in America in the first place.
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