For decades, Corky Lee depicted the struggles, joys, conflicts and connections that make up the warp and weft of everyday life in Chinatown, and gave us a ground-level view of Chinatown’s social, labor and political activism. Unlike conventional photojournalists who covered Chinatown at the time, the self-taught photojournalist was actually rooted in this community, He cut his teeth as a young activist with the radical organizations that defined the East Coast wing of the Asian American movement. And over the years, he documented the evolution of movements for racial justice, economic equity and civil rights in Chinatown and Asian America. 

Last year, a tribute exhibit was held at Pearl River, my family’s store and a place that Corky had frequented since the 1970s. On display was not a retrospective of Corky’s work, but an array of photographs taken by colleagues and friends, who had, in one way or another, been influenced by Corky’s style and approach to the medium. I interviewed several artists about their work and Corky's legacy.

Chee Wang Ng is a Malaysian-born artist and designer and one of the curators of the exhibit. 

Wai Ng is a New York based photographer.

Stan Honda is a photojournalist who has documented the history of Japanese American concentration camps during World War II.

Louis Chan is a New York-based photographer, born and raised on the Lower East Side. 

Cindy Trinh is a New York-based photojournalist and social activist.

Finally, we bring you an interview with Corky himself from the APF Archives: I spoke with him at the "Serve the People" exhibit, about the early days of the Asian American movement in New York, at the Interference Archive in Brooklyn in 2013.



Learn more about Corky Lee and the new documentary about his career at corkylee.org.

The opening and closing music is "We are the Children," from A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America  (1973 Paredon Records)

                                                         --Michelle Chen, co-producer, APF Collective

If you’d like to learn more APF Forum and listen to our archived episodes, go to https://anchor.fm/asiapacificforum. You can also view our older archives through New York University's Asian/Pacific/American Institute at https://apa.nyu.edu/. If you would like to contribute to or help produce Asia Pacific Forum, you can find out more about joining the APF Collective at asiapacificforum@gmail.com.