The Photographic Resistance of Visual Historian Corky Lee

Corky Lee (September 5, 1947–January 27, 2021) was born and raised in Queens.^¹ He was born as Young Kwok Lee (李扬国); his nickname, "Corky," was brought about as a result of constant mispronunciations, solidifying awareness of his American-born Chinese identity at a young age.^¹ His father, Lee Yin Chuck, and mother, Jung See Lee, both immigrated to the United States from Taishan, China.^¹ His father was a World War II veteran — something that would later influence Corky’s advocacy for public recognition of the 20,000 Chinese-American veterans of WWII — and his mother was a seamstress.^¹ He had an older sister named Fee, and three younger brothers named John, James, and Richard. 

Though most accounts of Corky’s artistic and political development begin during his years as an undergraduate at Queens College, his years growing up in Queens likely had a profound impact on the kind of work he would go on to do. His parents’ jobs — his father’s work as a welder-turned-laundryman, and his mother’s sewing work — clearly incubated a love for finding dignity and beauty in working-class trades. 

Friends and comrades of Corky often also reference one of his earliest realizations about the connection between the erasure of Chinese-American history and photography, which took place in middle school. As a student in the New York City public school system, at Van Wyck Junior High School in Queens, Corky was taught many uncritical founding myths about America.^¹ He first noticed the omission of Asian stories from mainstream history when he saw a famous textbook picture that illustrated the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Despite the fact that an overwhelming 90% of the laborers who worked on building the railroad were Chinese, the photo instead celebrated the white men who drove in the final — and purely ceremonial — golden stake.^¹ Corky would do his part in amending this historical inaccuracy in 2014, when he gathered more than a hundred Chinese-Americans, including some direct descendants of railroad workers, at Utah’s Promontory Point. Posing the gathered crowd for a picture, he told them: “We’re Chinese Americans. We’re Asian Pacific Americans, so let me hear it! We came today to reclaim American history.”^¹ In many ways, whether quietly or through a megaphone, Corky proclaimed that ethos for his entire career. 

In the mid-1970s, New York’s rapidly growing Asian immigrant population faced mounting bigotry, discrimination, and police violence. Some of the events preceding this include the Korean War, which had occurred decades before (1950-1953) and intensified anti-Asian sentiment. This era popularized the narrative of the “Yellow Peril,” a manifestation of xenophobic ideas that Asian individuals would “steal” American jobs and “invade” U.S. civilization.^¹ Between the Vietnam War and the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, this time period also came with a rise in dehumanization of the Asian American community. Our archive covers in detail the uprisings and class resistance against war, poverty, and government disinvestment that occurred between the 1960s and 1970s.

Corky Lee’s adolescent years were shaped by the turbulent social and political climate of the long 1960s. What we find remarkable about his work is that he took it upon himself to bring to life both the everyday and the political of New York City’s Asian American communities. For instance, Corky was accepted as a VISTA volunteer in 1969 to aid under-served communities of the Lower East Side through the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, a social service agency with an office in Chinatown. Through his work as a housing advocate, he came into daily contact with social and political injustices in the Chinese immigrant community and began photographing examples of society’s ills. Here, he observed how affordable housing in Asian enclaves was scarce, and how gentrification pressures from real estate developers were threatening Chinatown’s local community and culture.^¹ Corky turned to his camera to capture the neglected infrastructure and lack of equitable housing in Chinatown by taking “photographs of the deplorable conditions” in the Lower East Side as a community organizer.^¹ Lee believed that representing such inhumane conditions like overcrowding in a visual format would instill more empathy in viewers, and could lead to stronger conviction that change was necessary.^¹ 

When we look at Corky’s photographs, we can feel the way in which the everyday is centered and politicized. In other sections of this exhibit, we can see Corky’s documentation of protests, which are explicitly political in nature. But what is striking about his work is how he was able to build bridges between his lens and the audience, demonstrating how the everyday is political. Scenes that were taken for granted as ordinary–Asian elders sitting in a cramped living room, or a child peering out from behind his mother working in a garment factory–became narratives and unique stories through his lens. These stories teach us to question the ordinary and look more intentionally for the context that wrought such conditions. 

In Corky Lee’s career as a community photographer, he documented many pivotal moments in social movement organizing in Asian American history. Two such moments were the 1975 and 1982 mass mobilizations against anti-Asian violence in New York City and Detroit, respectively following the beating of Peter Yew and the murder of Vincent Chin. Emerging from a national political milieu of intensified anti-Asian sentiment following the US’s defeat in the Vietnam War,^¹ Corky Lee’s photography of these movements and the everyday people they mobilized is a testament to the collective organizing and resilience of the Asian American communities of NYC and beyond.

Peter Yew

On April 26, 1975, growing racial tensions in Chinatown came to a head with the police brutalization of Peter Yew.^¹ Yew – a 27-year-old engineering student – had attempted to intervene as police officers beat a 15-year-old on Bayard Street involved in a minor traffic dispute. He was then assaulted by the police, dragged to the 5th Precinct, stripped, and assaulted a second time.^¹ Asian American communities nationwide mobilized quickly after Yew was jailed on unclear charges without any due process, sparking the beginning of a mass movement against police brutality in Chinatown.^¹

On May 19, 1975, three weeks after Yew’s beating and detention, an estimated 20,000 people filled Chinatown’s Foley Square in what would become the largest Asian American protest in US history.^¹ As Corky Lee documented in some of his most recognizable work, the demonstration was undertaken by a multi-generational street coalition that called for unity among racial minorities, demanding not only that charges against Yew be dropped, but that the larger community of racial minorities in New York City “unite and fight” against all forms of racial oppression. These demands were written in Chinese and English, held high above the heads of ordinary Chinatown residents demanding collective justice and accountability for the racially-charged violence of the NYPD. 

In a protest at City Hall in response to this injustice, Corky Lee managed to capture a moment when one protester had been attacked by police officers, his face streaked with blood. Lee’s photograph landed on the front page of the New York Post, igniting conversations across Chinatown that bridged generations and backgrounds, and cementing Lee’s legacy as the movement’s unofficial visual historian. From that point on, he would continue to submit pictures to further his photojournalism in publications such as the Downtown Express, the Chinese American Times, Unity & Struggle, and East Wind.^¹ Corky’s photography worked to both preserve a historical record of the protest and also escalate local and national outrage over the beating of Peter Yew. Ultimately, authorities were pressured by the public to drop all charges against Yew, marking a turning point in the fight for Asian American civil rights.

Vincent Chin

Corky Lee’s documentation of community mobilization against anti-Asian violence continued nearly a decade after the beating of Peter Yew, and well beyond the borders of New York City. In 1982, Asian Americans led another wave of mass mobilizations against anti-Asian violence following the murder of Vincent Chin. Vincent Chin was a 27-year-old, Chinese-American industrial draftsman who was employed at an automotive supplier company in Detroit.^¹ Amidst mass worker layoffs, wage cuts, and increased labor outsourcing due to globalization in the automobile industry, anti-Japanese sentiment resurfaced in the US in full force. After being mistaken as a Japanese immigrant by Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, two white men, Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat following an altercation at a local bar.^¹ A year after Chin’s murder, the two perpetrators were announced to be released without any jail time incurred and a mere $3,000 fine and probation. In his verdict, the sentencing judge, Charles Kaufman, said, "These aren't the kind of men you send to jail."^¹

Chin’s murder and the lack of due justice for his assailants – a product of longstanding anti-Japanese, anti-Asian sentiment following WWII, and a testament to state indifference to Asian American suffering – led to mass protests and cries for pan-Asian solidarity across the country. Nearly a decade after the beating of Peter Yew, Corky Lee continued to document community mobilization against anti-Asian violence, photographing protests in Detroit over Vincent Chin’s murder and, in turn, creating a de facto archive of collective organizing and cross-diasporic coalition building against violence in the Asian American community.^¹

[Vincent Chin protest photo]

In addition to the protests mentioned in the prior section, Corky Lee’s camera preserved some of the most iconic images of a Chinatown alive with activism: demonstrations against the Vietnam War, police brutality, exploitative employers, predatory landlords, and more. Through his camera's lens, he affirmed the neighborhood’s pivotal role in Asian-American social justice history. 

As both a former New York City public school student and a concerned community member, Corky often documented student protests and youth activism, especially around issues of education. In 1971, students and a teacher from Junior High School 65 gathered at Chatham Square to demand bilingual instruction—a landmark moment in Chinatown’s push for equitable education. Nearly three decades later, that vision took a major leap forward when Shuang Wen Academy (P.S. 184M) opened in 1998, becoming one of the nation’s first public Mandarin–English dual-language schools and a model for bilingual learning across the United States.

Corky also brought his camera uptown in 1996, when students at Columbia University protested for the creation of an ethnic studies program.^¹ Reviving one of the demands of the student protestors of the 1960s and 1970s, the Columbia students drew on evocative protest tactics from hunger strike to building takeovers. Corky's photographs of the protests show young people with picket signs and looks of determination on their faces. As a result of their efforts, Columbia created the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race in 1998. 

[Ethnic Studies photo]

Corky Lee was deeply invested in the Asian American fight for justice. His unique brand of activism through photography, which he often referred to as his “sword against injustice,” functioned not only as a way to convey inequality in a way that was accessible to the public, but also as a tool for community unification. From behind the camera, he challenged the social, economic, and racial inequalities that impacted Asian-Americans. He seemed to have the ability to be at every important community event, from Chinatown to San Francisco to Detroit, to capture moments that would never reach American mainstream media. While many of his photos are of public struggle, they are also deeply celebratory: of daily life, of the hard work and victories of the working class, and of the Asian youth who work so hard to fight for the liberation of their people. 

In more recent years, Corky’s photography gained more mainstream acclaim, but those who knew him knew his legacy years before that. Corky worked tirelessly to create a visual history of social movements well into the 2000s. He was there at a candlelight vigil held in Central Park after 9/11, documenting the surge of xenophobia against Sikhs. And when there was a Women’s March against the presidency of Donald Trump in 2017, Lee was right in the middle. His presence was loved, admired, and respected by countless individuals in Chinatown and beyond: not just for the artistry of his photographs, but for his dedication to community.

Even as the pandemic raged in New York in 2020 and 2021, Corky was still in the streets — masked, but with his camera in hand. He spent these years photographing anti-Asian hate protests, a cause he had documented for years but that had gained renewed visibility in pandemic times. After likely contracting COVID-19 while covering a Guardian Angels action against anti-Asian hate crimes, Corky passed away in 2021 from complications from the virus. 

As I sat down to read about Corky for this exhibit, something that struck me was the care with which he was remembered after his passing by so many different people in his orbit. Jennifer Takaki, the director and producer of the documentary, Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story, reflected on her friend by saying, “Everybody felt special to Corky. He united people and made them proud of who they were. It's very rare to meet someone who seems to have all the time in the world for everyone. Corky was there for everyone.”^¹ Production designer Wing Lee, a friend of Corky’s since their days organizing in Chinatown in the 1970s, also noted, “He was more than a photographer. He was a history maker.”^¹

We leave you with the powerful words of Taiyo Na, a friend and collaborator of Corky’s. In his tribute to Corky, “Outlive Us All,” Taiyo writes: 

“COVID and government neglect killed Corky. He’d been photographing our community for over 50 years. This pandemic shouldn’t have stopped him. The Viet Nam War years didn’t. NYC going bankrupt didn’t. The Reagan years didn’t. Those recessions didn’t, but the pandemic did. I wanted him to meet my newborn. Even though he wore all the PPE, COVID and government neglect killed him. Racism killed him. The work killed him.

That work where if you knew him you heard it. He told you he came up with the name “Basement Workshop” in the early ‘70s because they met in the basement in Chinatown. He told you about Grace Lee Boggs howling across the Washington Monument, and he told you about the Kochiyamas testifying at the Redress & Reparations hearings. He told you about the Peter Yew protests, the Vincent Chin demonstrations, the Grain of Sand reunion concerts, the post-9/11 portraits of the Sikh community, the Filipino World War II veterans testifying for benefits, the Promontory Summit 150th anniversary photo. 

And yet he also took a photo of you while you were on the block, on the train, at your first heritage festival, your first Day of Remembrance, your first rally, your first new year, doing the dance, at the parade, singing the song, at the gallery, by the fire hydrant, through the storefront window, with the children and grandparents. He'd shoot you, get your name down on a notepad, get you a print if he could, and remember your face next time. He never forgot a face. And he'd tell you why you in that shot mattered, why you were worth the time and place.”^¹ 

~~~~~~

To see more of Corky’s work in action, we recommend you explore some other LHP Youth Researchers’ exhibits!

For more on Corky and labor organizing, please read Clarissa Kunizaki’s exhibit, It’s Not Yet Spring, Unless All Flowers Blossom: the 1982 Chinatown Garment Workers’ Strike. 

To learn more about Corky’s involvement with community health initiatives in Chinatown, please read Abby Chen’s exhibit, Community Organizing and Health Access in New York City's Chinatown in the 1970s. 

And for more on Corky’s role in founding and documenting the Chinatown arts collective, Basement Workshop, please read Ruiyu Tang’s exhibit, Youth Social Consciousness and Place-Based Education in 1970s Chinatown.

Ash, Alec. 2024. “Corky Lee’s Chinatown | China Books Review.” China Books Review. April 18, 2024. https://chinabooksreview.com/2024/04/18/corky-lees-chinatown/.  

 Unofficial, Lee: 2023. “Corky Lee: Unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate | about the Hero.” Lowell Milken Center. November 6, 2023. https://www.lowellmilkencenter.org/programs/projects/view/corky-lee-unofficial-asian-american-photographer-laureate/hero;

“Corky Lee from the Collection of ARTEFFECT.” 2021. Artwork Archive. 2021. https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/arteffect/artwork/corky-lee-arteffect?collection=journalism-unsung-heroes. 

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PBS NewsHour. 2024. “The History-Making Legacy of Asian American Photographer Corky Lee.” YouTube. May 11, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKngZ0_f-M. 

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Genzlinger, N. (2021). Corky Lee, 73, Photographer Who Chronicled Asian-American Life, Is Dead. The New York Times, A25-L.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/nyregion/corky-lee-dead-coronavirus.html 

“Chinatown’s Housing Evolution · NYC Chinatown: A Community Safeguarding Space · CAAAV Digital Archive.” 2015. Caaav.org. 2015. https://archives.caaav.org/exhibits/show/nyc-chinatown--a-community-saf/chinatown-s-housing-evolution. 

Lee, Marie Myung Ok. 2021. “The U.S. Military’s Long History of Anti-Asian Dehumanization.” Korean Quarterly. April 18, 2021. https://www.koreanquarterly.org/stop-asian-hate/embedded-stereotypes/.

Bowling Green State University. 2019. “Asian Immigration: The ‘Yellow Peril’ · Race in the United States, 1880-1940 · Student Digital Gallery · BGSU Libraries.” Bgsu.edu.  Bowling Green State University. 2019. https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/exhibits/show/race-in-us/asian-americans/asian-immigration-and-the--yel. 

Stanford University. 2021. “Timeline of Systemic Racism against AAPI.” Rise up for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders - Spotlight at Stanford. 2021. https://exhibits.stanford.edu/riseup/feature/timeline-of-systemic-racism-against-aapi.

De Leon, Adrian. 2020. “The Long History of Racism against Asian Americans in the U.S.” PBS NewsHour. PBS. April 9, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-long-history-of-racism-against-asian-americans-in-the-u-s;

“‘Model Minority.’” 2019. Umich.edu. 2019. https://aapi.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/aapi_michigan/page/model-minority. 

“Who Was Peter Yew? – AAPI History Museum.” n.d. https://aapihistorymuseum.org/who-was-peter-yew/.

Maitland, Leslie. 1975. “2,500 Chinese Protest Alleged Police Beating Here (Published 1975).” The New York Times, May 13, 1975, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/13/archives/2500-chinese-protest-alleged-police-beating-here.html.

Carmody, Deirdre. 1975. “Thousands in Chinatown March in Police Protest.” The New York Times, May 20, 1975, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/20/archives/thousands-in-chinatown-march-in-police-protest-report-to-city-hall.html.

“UNITY STRUGGLE.” n.d. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/periodicals/unity-struggle/us-4-8.pdf. 

 “East Wind, Spring-Summer 1982 Front Cover | Museum of Chinese in America.” 2021. Pastperfectonline.com. 2021. https://mocanyc.pastperfectonline.com/Media/87AA3A52-F4AA-488C-BEA1-524454240548. 

 “Why ‘Photographic Justice’ Mattered to Asian American Photographer Corky Lee.” 2024. PBS News Hour Classroom. May 14, 2024. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/daily-news-lessons/2024/05/the-legacy-of-asian-american-photographer-corky-lee. 

Ishizuka, Karen. “Looking Like the Enemy: Political Identity & the Vietnam War.” Pacific Council on International Policy, May 7, 2019.

American Citizens for Justice. “Who was Vincent Chin? https://www.americancitizensforjustice.org/history/

Boxer, Sarah. 2002. “ART/ARCHITECTURE; Getting Asian-Americans into the Picture.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times. August 4, 2002. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/arts/art-architecture-getting-asian-americans-into-the-picture.html. 

Story, Lee. 2024. “‘Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story’ Offers an Intimate Portrait.” Asian American Arts Alliance. 2024. https://www.aaartsalliance.org/magazine/stories/photographic-justice-is-an-intimate-portrait-of-corky-lee.