TRANSCRIPT
(light gentle music) (light gentle music continues) (light gentle music continues) - All right, yeah, I can, okay, I'm ready, let me see.
Okay.
(exciting music) - Being a street photographer, I see a different part of Chinatown that the general public does not see.
(driving light music) It's not a drive-by tourist destination to me.
It's a real living community of people trying to survive.
(driving light music) (driving light music continues) There's a human side of the story.
(driving light music) We are not docile.
(driving light music) We had some genuine concerns.
(driving light music) I've been photographing Chinatown since my college days.
That would be in the late '60s.
(driving light music) Through the Third World movement, it was a growing intensity to tell stories ourselves and not let the mainstream society dictate to us what we should see and believe.
(driving light music) (driving light music continues) I think that the photographs I have of Chinese Americans exercising their democratic rights, voicing concerns about things as simple as tenant eviction and specialized high school entrance exams, which shows that Chinese care about their community.
(heartfelt music) I never liked the idea of being a model minority.
(exciting music) I was never good in math or in science.
I just said, "Well, you know, if I'm gonna be a responsible individual in this society, I gotta do something else."
(hopeful music) I chose photography.
(hopeful music) It was something that I sort of picked up.
(hopeful music) At times, I'd wanna be that person in front of the camera, but I can't be that person in front of the camera, so I'm looking for a suitable substitute to be my voice.
(gentle hopeful music) (gentle hopeful music fades) (car engines whir) (speaking Cantonese) Over the period of five decades of taking the hundreds of thousands of photographs.
- My dad was a veteran of World War II.
- [Corky] When I was younger, there were days that I would photograph three events easily.
I sort of got an inspiration from "New York Times" photographer Bill Cunningham, who would photograph three or four social events riding around on a bicycle.
(speaking Cantonese) - [Corky] My parents start to understand what I was doing when my photographs appeared in Chinese language publications, or if I would have a photograph in one of the newspapers and I would hand gently leave a copy of that on the kitchen table so they would happen to see it.
My mother would brag about it.
She would tell all the tenants in Confucius Plaza.
She says, "Oh, this is my son."
(bright music) That was basically a sense of pride that I was recognized outside of my own family, but within the Chinese community.
(bright music) (children sing) People have been referring to me as Corky Lee as far back as junior high school.
I think it was my Jewish friend that gave me the name Corky, because the name that I was using was at the time was Quoork.
The spelling was Q-U-O-O-R-K.
So, but they basically transliterated Quoork to C-O-R-K-Y.
(children sing) So I became Corky.
(children sing) (children sing) (crowd murmurs) Okay.
- I told him you have to meet Corky, so you wanna tell them- - That's my stuff over there.
- That's how I could meet you.
- When people look at the photographs, they can sort of read into it that this is what was done during a certain period of time.
If they see deplorable conditions, they can say, "This has to change," and maybe it'll motivate people to do something to enact those changes, either individually or collectively.
Well, were you in Chinatown when Muhammad Ali came?
- No.
- No?
- I was at PS1, though.
- You were at PS1?
- PS1.
- 1975.
This is right after the Thrilla in Manila.
Before people started to come up to me and tell me that they liked the photographs, yeah, maybe I was, you know, somewhat invisible, but if I was invisible, I didn't want the larger community, Asian Pacific Americans, to be invisible.
So, what have you heard about me?
It's probably exaggerated.
- Social photographer, like- - Social photographer?
- Like, you're like the grandfather of Asian American, like photography.
It's like- - The grandfather, did you say?
- Yeah, the grandfather.
- You're really dating me now.
(speaker laughs) - You never gave up.
That's the thing.
And now you're at a very crucial point with your work.
The important part is the front end being an activist.
- Yeah.
- You are.
- I'm probably more of an activist.
- Be the voice for these people.
The pictures are there.
They're historic already, so you can't go back in time and shoot them.
- After people see my photographs, they'll basically learn something about what it is to be Asian American.
It's an attempt to educate people one photograph at a time.
(bright music) This photograph is a front page photograph from the "New York Post" that I was able to get in 1975.
I did an end round run, kind of like a wide receiver in football.
I beat out the "Daily News" photographer over here, but my photograph appeared on the same day that this took place.
The "Daily News" photograph appeared the following day.
This was from arguably the largest protest by Chinese Americans in New York City.
There's like 20,000 that came out, and it had to do with an incident of police brutality.
These two guys were in school together, and they were the tallest guys, and every time that the Chinese kids would get picked on and bullied, they would stand up for them.
But the key thing among this whole thing is this Black kid right in the middle, and he's got this grin on his face or smile, and he just can't believe that Chinese are protesting police brutality, because that's something that happens in the Black community and the Hispanic community all the time.
This is from 1982 when the union, ILGW, International Lady Garment Workers Union, called for a strike in Columbus Park and 15,000 garment workers.
This has to be the largest labor, you know, protest in Chinatown ever.
And this is a candlelight vigil.
This woman is lighting candles for a 9/11 vigil that takes place annually in Chatham Square.
There are two streets that are named after Chinese who died.
My photography connects me to people.
You can be alone but not be lonely, I think.
I started to lose sleep after my wife passed away.
At the time, I had worked out something with the Museum of Chinese in the Americas back in 2001, and they wanted me to do an exhibit of my photography.
So actually, when they heard that my wife was in hospice care, and particularly when she passed, they called me up and they asked me if they should postpone the exhibit, the solo exhibit.
And I said, "Okay, fine.
Let me go ahead."
So basically, I went into the darkroom and I did all my grieving printing photographs in preparation for the exhibit and it took me about two weeks.
I came out, and still, a lot of people who, you know, came to the wake, I mean, to the opening, because it was probably a couple weeks after the wake, I mean the funeral.
They didn't know.
So, and you just sort of move on because I think that's what my wife would want me to do.
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- It's always been a pretty tough balance.
I had to pay the rent, so I have to generate enough income on a monthly basis or an annual basis.
(contemplative music) Ideas are worth nothing if you can't generate a paycheck.
(contemplative music) The tough part about being compensated for my work is, especially if it appears on the internet, people think it's in the public domain.
So when I see it, I basically let people know, I wish you had asked me permission so I could say yes or no.
(contemplative music) As I collect more, these photographs will become valuable, (contemplative music) and basically, I have always looked at the collection as my 401(k).
(hopeful music) (hopeful music continues) (hopeful music continues) As I start to age, I get really tired and exhausted.
(contemplative music) I have chronic arthritic knees.
(contemplative music) I'll go home and I'll have cramps in my forearm and my legs and so forth, and I know I've been up on my feet for like six hours.
(contemplative music) After a gala dinner or something, I don't get a chance to eat, so I'll stop by a halal food truck, you know, after I get out of the subway and I'll maybe take a painkiller or two.
(contemplative music) Then I'll be okay.
I ask myself, how much longer can I do this?
(contemplative music) How much longer can I haul all the equipment and get the photographs?
I could probably do this for another 15 years.
I'll just keep going until I can't do it anymore.
I may be six feet under pushing up daisies.
when people realize that I've had this tremendous visual record of what took place in the '70s, '80s and the '90s.
It's almost the history of Chinese in America.
(contemplative music) I'm okay with not being recognized at this point because as long as the photographs are still around and they're circulated or deposited, let's say in the Library of Congress, researchers will start looking.
At this stage of my life, I'm happy with it.
I can leave something for future generations.
(contemplative music) A lot of college students come up to me and said, "Corky, I studied you in college."
That generally makes me laugh.
And I said, "If I got a dollar for every time my name is mentioned in a college lecture, you know, I'd be a rich man in China, but I'm still a struggling photographer in America."
(contemplative music) I've been asked why I continue taking the activist photographs.
And I said, "If I don't do it, I can't think of anybody else that would do it."
But in doing so, I know I've empowered and inspired other people to do the same thing.
(contemplative music) Maybe I'll encourage someone else to take up the cause and if they're willing to sacrifice financial gain, that they can become the next Corky Lee.
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For fifty years, New York photographer Corky Lee has documented Asian American communities around the country. His work has countered the oversimplified narrative of Asian Americans as they have historically been represented in media. Lee instead offers a rich tapestry of diverse communities, chronicled in over 100,000 photographs. He has notably photographed protests following the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, Asian American first responders in the aftermath of 9/11, and he’s most recently covered his community amidst the uptick in anti-Asian violence connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Curtis Chin is a co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City. Chin served as the non-profits’ first Executive Director. He went on to write for network and cable television before transitioning to social justice documentaries. Chin has screened his films at over 600 venues in sixteen countries. He has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, the Detroit Free Press, and the Emancipator/Boston Globe. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. His memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant” was published by Little, Brown in Fall 2023. His essay in Bon Appetit was selected for Best Food Writing in America 2023.
