“Corky Lee’s Asian America” pays tribute to history in the making and to a documentary giant.
Sikh Americans at a vigil at Central Park in New York following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.The Estate of Corky Lee
- April 24, 2024, 2:13 PM EDT
- By Viviane Eng
- When Corky Lee was in junior high school in New York City in the 1960s, he wondered why Asian Americans were missing from history class narratives about who had built America and who could be considered American.
- In the decades that followed, the activist-photographer would dedicate his life to helping to make up for this omission by documenting Asian American history, culture and social movements.
- Such is the project of “Corky Lee’s Asian America,” a 300-page retrospective of Lee’s most iconic photographs, which was published posthumously via Clarkson Potter earlier this month. Edited by visual artist Chee Wang Ng and historian Mae Ngai, the book chronicles 50 years of Asian American history, as seen through Lee’s lens. It represents the first time his body of work has been published as a collection. Lee died in 2021 at 73 from complications of Covid.
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