Corky Lee

Young Kwok "Corky" Lee (September 5, 1947 – January 27, 2021) was an American journalistic photographer. His work chronicled and explored the diversity and nuances of Asian American culture overlooked by mainstream media, and advocated for ensuring Asian American history was included as a part of American history. Lee's work has documented key events in Asian-American political history. One of these images was taken in 1975 of Peter Yew, a Chinese-American man who was beaten by members of the New York City Police Department and then hauled away by the police officers. This picture was featured on the front page of the New York Post. On the day that the picture was published, 20,000 people marched from Chinatown to City Hall, protesting against police brutality. Lee also photographed the protests that took place after the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Michigan. Chin was a young Chinese-American man living in Detroit who was murdered by Ronald Ebens, a superintendent at Chrysler Motors, and his stepson. The perpetrators attacked Chin, of Chinese descent, after mistaking him for being from Japan, at a time when Japanese companies were blamed for the loss of American auto industry jobs. Lee humorously referred to himself as the "undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate." His photographs documented the daily lives of Asian-Americans as well as various historical moments in American history. David Dinkins, the mayor of New York City at the time, proclaimed May 5, 1988, to be "Corky Lee Day," recognizing Lee's work as an important contribution to New York City communities. He regularly supplied his photographs to the weekly local newspapers Downtown Express and The Villager during the 1990s and 2000s. Lee died on January 27, 2021, at the Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City. He was 73 years old and suffered from complications of COVID-19 in the time leading up to his death.