Remembering Corky Lee, The NYC Photographer Who Made Sure Asian Americans Were Never Forgotten View all 6
The first time An Rong Xu thought he had met Corky Lee was in 2008. Xu was a first year photography student at the School of Visual Arts who was in search of a compelling project about Asian Americans. He went to the Asian American Arts Centre in Chinatown, where the director Bob Lee told him simply, You gotta find Corky Lee.
Lee, who died at 73 last week from coronavirus, had by then become
the documentarian photographer of Asian Americans in New York City, shooting the community in its various moments of repose, work, and unrest: a taxi driver at the wheel balancing a cup of coffee; a child staring absentmindedly against the fluorescent backdrop of a worn factory; young male protesters linked arm-in-arm in unity. Then there were the countless community events, poetry readings, and small museum galas that Lee shot because nobody else cared enough to.