Corky Lee’s Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice

For this dynamic collection, visual artist Ng (Have You Eaten Your Fill of Rice?) and Columbia University history professor Ngai (The Chinese Question) gather images from the half century that the late photographer Corky Lee (1947–2021) spent documenting Asian American communities, first in New York City and later across the country. An activist who once declared, “Every time I take my camera out of my bag, it is like drawing a sword to combat... injustice,” Lee chronicled 1970s demonstrations against police brutality after the beating of Peter Yew, somber 1980s vigils to commemorate Japanese internment during WWII, and 1990s labor law protests, as well as more quotidian subjects—laundry stacked for pickup; his mother’s living room. Post 9/11, Lee “seem[ed] to be everywhere, dauntless,” capturing wreckage both physical and emotional, including an especially intense shot of a Central Park vigil in which a Sikh man draped in an American flag stares “silently forward, past Lee’s camera and the viewer’s gaze.” The image reads as particularly gutting given the spate of “revenge attacks” against South Asians and Arabs at the time. Short essays from friends and fellow activists add useful historical context, but Lee’s photographs pack plenty of punch on their own. This is a potent record of Asian Americans’ continued struggle for equality. (Apr.)