Corky Lee, known for photographing Asian America, dies at 73

Corky Lee, a photojournalist who spent five decades spotlighting the often ignored Asian and Pacific Islander American communities, has died. He was 73.

Lee died Wednesday in New York City’s Queens borough of complications from COVID-19, his family said in a statement.

“His passion was to rediscover, document and champion through his images the plight of all Americans but most especially that of Asian and Pacific Islanders,” his family said.

The self-described “undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate,” Lee used his eye to pursue what he saw as “photographic justice.” Almost always sporting a camera around his neck, he was present at many seminal moments impacting Asian America over a 50-year career.

He was born Young Kwok Lee in New York City to Chinese immigrant parents.

He was the first child in his family to go to college, graduating from City University of New York’s Queens College.

A self-taught freelance photographer, Lee aimed his camera lens on a slew of subjects from anti-Vietnam war protests to police brutality.

Over the years, his photos appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, the New York Post, New York Daily News, The Associated Press and Asian American outlets. Most recently, he was documenting anti-Asian racism brought on by the pandemic.

Lee was there when Asian Americans took to the streets to protest the lack of jail time for the killers of Vincent Chin. The 27-year-old Chin was beaten to death in Detroit in 1982, a time when Japan was being blamed for the U.S. auto industry’s decline. The two laid-off white autoworkers who killed Chin — who was Chinese — assumed he was Japanese. They were convicted of manslaughter but got just three years of probation.

In 2017, Lee organized a vigil outside the Nevada home of one of Chin’s attackers.

Several of Lee’s photos were prominently featured in the recent PBS docu-series, “Asian Americans.”