Corky Lee, an award-winning photographer who captured the everyday lives and political activism of the Asian American community, has died at the age of 73 after battling Covid-19.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Corky (Young Kwok) Lee,” said a statement from Lee’s family on Wednesday evening. “Corky, as he was known to the Asian American community, was everywhere. He always had a camera around his neck, documenting a community event, capturing a social injustice for the record and even correcting the social injustice of an historical event that took place well over a century ago. He did what he loved and we loved him for it.
“(Corky) had a very unique lens. His passion was to rediscover, document and champion through his images the plight of all Americans but most especially that of Asian and Pacific Islanders,” the statement added. “He has left us with what is likely to be the single largest repository of the photographic history of Asian Americans of the past half century.”
Lee first began experiencing Covid-19 symptoms on January 3, and was hospitalized on January 7, according to a family statement on a Facebook fundraiser page. He was moved to the ICU on January 11.
He is survived by his brother and sister-in-law, his elder sister’s husband, and both siblings’ children, according to the family’s statement.
Lee was born to two Chinese immigrants in Queens, New York. Dubbed the “Unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate,” he documented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in vivid, intimate detail over his 50-year career.
His photography began in junior high, when he saw a famous 1869 photograph commemorating the completion of the transcontinental railroad, according to the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University. But the photo, purportedly showing railroad workers, contained no Chinese workers – despite there being an estimated 15,000 Chinese laborers contributing to its construction.
The photo’s apparent erasure of Chinese workers inspired Lee’s future work: a lifetime of photographing Asian Americans and cementing their representation in history. In one of his most famous works, he gathered a group of Chinese Americans and descendants of Chinese railroad laborers to recreate the 1868 photograph in the same original location.
He also captured other historic moments of social and political upheaval; his photos covered antiwar protests, fair housing issues, the gentrification of Chinatown, Islamophobia after 9/11, and more. His work became more widely recognized after 1975, when he captured large-scale protests against police brutality, following the beating of a Chinese American at the hands of New York police officers.
In another well-known instance, Lee photographed furious demonstrations in 1983, sparked by the murder of Vincent Chin and the light sentence for his killers – a turning point for Asian American civil rights in the following decades.
His dedication to documenting racial injustice, its consequences and the community’s resistance continued until the end, with recent work focusing on attacks toward Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the family’s statement.
But his work also depicted the everyday, with many scenes from New York City’s Chinatown from the late 20th century. His photos showed shopkeepers lounging next to their goods, restaurant chefs on the street during their lunch break and children performing traditional lion dance at festivals. Other shots that captured the nuance and spirit of Asian American life.
Lee was actively involved in the community in other ways, too – in 2015 he co-founded