Photographer Lee dies of COVID at 73

New York photographer Corky Lee, who chronicled the Asian American experience and used his insight and his camera to correct an important piece of U.S. history, died Wednesday from coronavirus complications, his family said.

He was 73.

Lee (photo), a pillar of Chinatown activism, covered everything from survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing in 1945 to the fight for Chinatown World War II veterans.

But his best camera work may have come in 2014 when he recreated a photograph commemorating the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.

The iconic 1869 image featured the symbolic hammering of a golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, which completed the connection between the country’s two coasts and shortened a cross-country trip of more than six months down to a week.

The picture shows a crowd of mostly white men swarmed around two locomotives. But it was Chinese laborers who did most of the work.

To give them their due, Lee gathered descendants of those laborers in the same spot nearly 150 years later and took their picture, restoring an important piece of history to its rightful owners.

Lee received praise for photographs of immigration legislation and civil rights protests.