Young Corky Lee (September 5, 1947 – January 27, 2021) was a Chinese-American activist, community organizer, photographer, journalist, and the self-proclaimed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate. He called himself an "ABC from NYC ... wielding a camera to slay injustices against APAs." His work chronicled and explored the diversity and nuances of Asian American culture often ignored and overlooked by mainstream media, striving to make Asian American history a part of American history.

Early life and education

Lee was born on September 5, 1947, in Queens, New York City. He was the second child of Lee Yin Chuck and Jung See Lee, both of whom had immigrated to the United States from Guangdong, Taishan, China. His father, who had served in the US Army in World War II, owned a laundrette. His mother was a seamstress. Lee had an older sister (Fee) and three younger brothers (John, James, and Richard). Lee attended Jamaica High School before going on to study American history at Queens College in 1965.

Lee taught himself photography, borrowing cameras because he could not afford his own. He said his work was inspired by an 1869 photograph he had seen in a social studies textbook that celebrated the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah. While the massive construction project had employed thousands of Chinese workers, the photo depicted only white laborers. The Stanford University Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project would later object to Lee's claims, by pointing out two Chinese workers who are in the famous Andrew J. Russell "handshake" photograph. Lee had begun to update his research and share the news of the railroad workers identified in the A.J. Russell photos among people he met in the time before his death.

Photographic work

Lee's work documented key events in Asian American political history. His 1975 photograph of a Chinese American man being beaten by NYPD officers was featured in the New York Post. On the day the picture was published, 20,000 people marched from Chinatown to City Hall protesting police brutality in response to the beating of Peter Yew.

Lee photographed protests after the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Michigan. Chin was a young Chinese American man living in Detroit who was killed by Ronald Ebens, a superintendent at Chrysler Motors, and his stepson. The perpetrators attacked Chin, of Chinese descent, after mistaking him for being Japanese, as Japanese companies were blamed for the loss of American auto industry jobs.

Lee proclaimed himself the "undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate". His photographs documented the daily lives of Asian Americans as well as historical moments in American history. Lee said his camera was a sword to combat racial injustice, to memorialize and make visible those who would otherwise be invisible by documenting the lives of minority-American cultures and communities.

Han Zhang, writing in The New Yorker, described the cultural impact of Lee's work: "Lee was to Chinatown what Bill Cunningham was to the sartorialists of Manhattan, and what Roy DeCarava was to post-Renaissance Harlem."

Later life

New York City Mayor David Dinkins proclaimed May 5, 1988, "Corky Lee Day," recognizing Lee's work as an important contribution to New York City communities.

Lee regularly published photographs to weekly local newspapers Downtown Express and The Villager during the 1990s and 2000s.

Lee contracted COVID-19 amidst the disease's global pandemic. He developed complications of the virus and died at Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills, Queens, New York on January 27, 2021. He was 73 years old. It is believed that he became infected with the virus while patrolling Chinatown with neighborhood watch groups that were protecting residents from the rise in anti-Asian violence. Lee's wife, Margaret Dea, died of cancer in 2001. In accordance with his wishes, Lee was interred in Kensico Cemetery following a funeral procession through New York's Chinatown.

Awards

• 1993, Photographer-Artist-in-Residence Award, Syracuse University
• 1993, Special Recognition Award, Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA)
• 2002, New York Press Association Award
• 2002, Artist-In-Residence, New York University's Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program & Institute
• 2008, Pioneer Award, Organization of Chinese Americans
• 2009, Susan Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Asian American Journalists Association
• 2014, UC Regents Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles Asian American Studies Center and Department & Luskin School of Public Affairs Urban Planning Department

Legacy

A 2022 documentary, Dear Corky, about Lee's life and community activism was made by director Curtis Chin.

On May 5, 2023, Lee was honored with a Google Doodle.

On October 22, 2023, a street sign for Corky Lee Way was unveiled in New York's Chinatown, at the corner of Mott Street and Mosco Street.

Streaming on PBS Passport, PHOTOGRAPHIC JUSTICE: The Corky Lee Story is a 2024 documentary feature about Corky Lee, "a loving tribute and valuable testament of one man’s inexhaustible mission" (New York Sun) "to push mainstream media to include AAPI culture in the visual record of American history.... produc<ing> an astonishing archive of nearly a million compelling photographs." (All is Well Pictures).