Corky Lee

Corky Lee (1947-2021) is known as the "undisputed, unofficial Asian American photographer laureate." A native of Queens, New York, the son of an immigrant hand-laundyman, Corky worked as a tenant organizer in New York's Chinatown after he graduated from Queens College (CUNY). He began photographing every day life and the emerging movement for civil rights and racial justice in Chinatown, and then broadened out to document Korean American, Filipino American, South Asian American, and other Asian American-Pacific Islander communities across the country. His work covers fifty continuous years of photography of AAPI communities and social movements. His work has been exhibited in 40 solo and group shows and published in 30 books (a few of these are "recommended" below). We lost Corky to COVID19 in January 2021, but he lives on in our hearts and in his amazing body of work. (from the Estate of Corky Lee)