Interview: Corky's Lens - a Conversation with Jennifer Takaki, Director of "Photographic Justice: the Corky Lee Story"
The first time filmmaker Jennifer Takaki met Corky Lee, she was looking for the bathroom.
“It was 2003, we were at an Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) event, and I happened to ask him where it was,” she says, “He gave me the whole history of the building. I was like, ‘Who are you?’ ”
An injured man is dragged away by police in Chinatown, Manhattan (Corky Lee, 1975)
Takaki went on to film Corky for all but two of the following eighteen years, until his death, in early 2021, of complications from Covid-19. The resulting documentary, Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story, is in its final stages of post-production. In making it, Takaki came across a growing community of creatives, activists and organisers, all drawn to the singular charisma of its central character and his quest for Asian American visibility.
For nearly fifty years, Corky Lee documented arguably every major event that concerned the Asian American community on the East Coast and beyond. His photos of protests against police brutality in Chinatown in 1975 documented the beginnings of a community rising up against injustice. In 2001, his photograph Metro Area 9/11 Candlelight Vigil in Central Park, featuring at its centre a Sikh-American man wrapped in an American flag, became a symbol of New Yorkers in solidarity after the September 11th attacks.
Lee was inspired to take up photography by the Promontory Summit photograph of 1869, which depicted workers on the Transcontinental Railroad, but excluded tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants who helped to build it. He started taking photos after studying history at Queen’s College, when he became a community organiser at Two Bridges Neighborhood Council. His self-taught photography career began when he helped Chinese-Americans in low-income housing assert tenancy rights by withholding rent, and taking before and after shots of the process.
Promontory Point, Utah (Corky Lee, 2014)
In an age before social media, Corky tirelessly called editors in the pursuit of inserting Chinese-American, Japanese-American and Filipino-American stories into the wider media. As he embedded himself in activism across the growing pan-Asian community in New York, his network widened. In the 1970’s, as once-disparate community groups recognised the power of cohesion, Corky’s photos bore witness to the emergence of the Asian American movement. In 2002, the New York Times would say, “Anything that happens in the lives of Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Indian-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Sri Lankan-Americans, Hmong-Americans, Thai-Americans, Cambodian-Americans, Burmese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Malaysian-Americans, Hawaiians and other Asian-Pacific-Americans is Corky Lee's business.”
Corky worked a day job for twenty-nine years at Expedi Printing, a printer of community newspapers. He humbly referred to himself as “an ABC from NYC”, and his business card read “Undisputed, Unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate”. When he died, a cacophony of voices rose up from the grassroots in tribute – from major publications to personal blogs – revealing the breadth of his legacy. Takaki does not see her documentary as the definitive effort to collate this legacy. “Not even Corky could tell his entire story,” she says, “The facets of who he was are held by so many people.”
Those people include anyone who has viewed one of his photos. These may range from historically significant, such as his multiple reshoots of the Promontory Summit photo, to intimate - Asian American punks in a bodega; his mother’s sewing machine. These images have helped generations of Asian Americans see themselves in history, all the better to gather together and fight for the future.
Over the course of the pandemic, Takaki says, Corky often took to his Facebook page to decry the rise of anti-Asian violence across America, and continued to use photography to bring it to light. In December 2020, he photographed members of the Guardian Angels vigilante group putting up posters in support of a Chinese-American woman who had been attacked on the subway. It was his final assignment; he began showing symptoms of Covid-19 in January the next year. “From the beginning to the very end, he felt his role in this violence, this hate, to combat racism was to take photos of what was happening,” says Takaki, “Good, bad or otherwise.”
Takaki never anticipated Corky dying. Talking to me over Zoom from New York, she often refers to him in the present, as though it’s impossible to imagine him in the past tense. Though I have edited this from the following conversation, it’s a reminder of his enduring character, and the effect he had on those around him. Corky Lee showed us the quiet power of one man with a camera and a mission; those still fighting for visibility and representation cannot truly know how much we owe him.
Sewing machine of Jung See Lee (Corky Lee, 1977)
Emma-Lee Moss: You refer to Corky as the “Kevin Bacon of the Asian American community”, which is amazing. Do you know anyone else who could say they’ve been instrumental in so many moments of Asian American history?
Jennifer Takaki: He was! Corky was the most charming, enigmatic, charismatic person you’ll ever meet. He was also knowledgeable, and nerdy – but he didn’t come across like that. He was more insightful, very funny. He would just interject history into conversations. He was this really compelling guy. Even if I read every book he was in and saw every interview about him, there would be new things he would find to talk to you about. He didn’t even know the effect he had on people.
Corky did a lot to bring the communities together. His role was so important because he was documenting what everybody was doing. When he started out, different communities were compartmentalised, but Corky was always crossing lines and taking photos. At the same time, people were realising that they were united because they all shared common interests. This is something that Peter Kwong told us during his interview for the film: they were realising that society as a whole saw them as a monolithic group, but to combat that they really had to be a group and to fight together. That’s how the term “Asian American” came about. All these young Asian Americans learned about each other, and Corky documented that.
Image credit: Corky Lee
Who are some of the people you interviewed for the film?
Peter Kwong is a historian, he was one of Corky’s really good friends – they worked really well together too; he would write copy, and Corky’s photos would help illustrate them. Joann Lee, former broadcast reporter and professor – who has also written books and used Corkys photos – and other contemporaries of Corky’s from the movement, though not all of them are in the final edit.
I also interviewed his mother, sister, his brothers - he had three brothers and one is still alive. The family was always really proud of Corky, but they teased him a lot for not being around for all the family moments. He was very singular in his vision. He felt immense internal pressure to be the one to document, because nobody else was doing it.
Did his family ever tell you where his sense of justice came from?
There was a sense of responsibility of being Chinese, passed down from generation to generation, Corky’s pride at being Chinese hit him when he was in college. He started learning about Asian history and started meeting others who looked like him and shared similar experiences.
Growing up, Corky always wanted to be that American kid. He wanted to be the one with the bike, he wanted to join the boy scouts. But his dad was an immigrant. He was the eldest boy, his sister was already out of the house. There wasn’t the money for the boys to go to boy scouts, his parents didn’t understand the symbolism of what it was. They couldn’t afford a bike. Corky’s dad had two laundromats, so Corky had to help out with those, and he had to help cook food. He would say he had a rough childhood.
Corky’s pride, a kind of patriotism, was instilled at a very young age. At the time, like any kid, he was just trying to fit in. Where you grow up, that’s your world. Like many of his generation, he was affected by the JFK speech – “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” All this led him down the path of what he could do.
Would he have been affected by the “I Have a Dream” speech when it happened?
Yes, his father had told him as a kid that what was happening in the Black civil rights movement was going to affect the Chinese-Americans in a positive way. The Asian American movement was a direct result of the Civil Rights movement, as well as the Anti-War Movement.
I think some of my favourite photos of his are of simple, ordinary scenes. It’s really affecting to see people in their ordinary lives, especially at points in history where the official version has simply erased them…
I love the stories in his photos. If you look at his photo on a superficial level, it’s just a photo, but he has a complicated story for all of them. Like there’s a woman who’s sitting in front of a wall on a New York street, she’s Asian American. You see the bags next to her and there’s a sign for Citibank across the street. Corky always had these stories – like “here’s a homeless woman and a bank sign and she doesn’t have access to money. And she lives in the city and she’s probably hungry”. He takes these photos with this entire story in his head. It’s representative to him of all this knowledge, not just of Chinese culture, but everyone’s culture.
He would take very quiet still photos of a laundromat, and he’d take photos of the brown paper – that’s how they used to wrap the laundry in the old days. He grew up in a laundromat, so he took these photos of things in a laundromat. These moments.
I think one of his own favourite photos is of his mom’s Singer sewing machine on a table, and above it is a photo of his sister’s wedding, and a calendar of China. In Corky’s head, it says so much about his mom working in the garment industry, of his sister’s marriage in the US, while the calendar of China represents their roots. It’s this timeless moment for him, and it speaks volumes for him, and for generations of people who can see the symbolism, what that means to an immigrant family. Many of his photos are like that, they have special meanings. He can capture an identity for many cultures. His photos are so compelling. That’s why they’re so important for history books.
Exhibition postcard from Corky Lee’s “Uniquely Asian Coincidentally American - Portraits of Asian/ Pacific Americans in New York…Well Almost." (1988)
He’s left such an impression on the next generation of people who want to do something. Was he aware of that?
He always had college kids contacting him, he was very open and engaging. Teaching them, letting them know about events in the city and sharing his knowledge.
He wasn’t just about photography or social justice or civil rights. He stood for so many things, like the arts. He had many quiet moments with people. Whether they were dancers, playwrights, actors, etc – Corky showed support by informing others of their events, and photographing the event itself.
He was so present and available that I feel he was underappreciated. You always felt like you were going to see him again. He had so much of other people’s history, personal information too, in his head. When he was gone, he left this void in the community. I’m horrible with names and faces. I keep thinking, “I’ll just ask Corky”.
Please answer this in any way that feels comfortable – what does it mean when your subject is gone and you have his legacy in your film?
This is really important to say – I don’t feel that pressure. Or maybe I’m working through the pressure and letting go. Because this film is just one aspect of who he was; by no means the be-all-and-end-all of encapsulating Corky and his legacy. Because Corky was such a complicated soul, and he was busy with so many things, my film is one of many things that people can learn about Corky. It is one moment I had with him.
If someone watches and is inspired by who he was, and wants to learn more about him, there is a lot of information about Corky not covered in the film. Those stories are just as important. I would be happy if people learn more about Asian American history, and perhaps feel compelled to learn more independently because that was, after all, his mission in life. There’s no doubt it was a mission well accomplished.
Corky Lee leading a Promontory Summit reenactment in Utah, 2014 (image credit: Scott Sommerdorf)
I want to emphasise that his photos were what was important to him, but so many people tell other stories that are really important to his whole being. There will be so many ways to tell Corky’s story.
It’s also really important to know that I’m not the only one working on the film, there are so many people and continue to be so many people who make it happen. My editor Linda Hattendorf is one of the most amazing, talented and dedicated people I have ever met. She’s been aboard for close to ten years. She and Corky had a mutual respect for each other.
We also have an incredible team of support, including our executive producer Lily M. Fan and associate producers Linda Lew Woo and Brittany Huie Santiago. However, it goes without saying that it takes a village to make a film. Support of the film has come both far and wide, including financially but in other ways as well.
For instance, our film has original music composed and performed by the band Yellow Pearl, which included the late Chris Iijima, Nobuko Miyamoto and Charlie Chin. They produced a record called Grains of Sand in 1973, and it became the soundtrack for the Asian American movement. A more recent group called Slant, which includes Rick Ebihara, Wayland Quintero and Perry Yung, allowed me to use their track It’s Tough Being Corky Lee, which is a line that Corky often stated.
I would like to add that Johnson & Johnson has been an early and longtime supporter of Corky, myself and the film. I think early on they realised that racism is a public health crisis, and knew the impact that Corky’s story could have on people – even though the New York City Board of Health has only recently officially declared this after an extreme rise in hate crimes against Asian American in 2020.
I’m picking out a few names here, there are so many people who are a part of this, including individuals and groups who have donated to the film, that I am grateful to.
How has working on this film, and knowing Corky for so long, affected you?
Sometimes I find myself seeing life through Corky’s lens. You see the world in a different way, because you see people and think “that would make a great Corky photo'“, or “Corky would love that”. He was so passionate and quirky and humble. There was nothing in it for him, he wasn’t doing it for fame, or fortune, he was doing it because he believed in it, and that was just the way he was built.
For example, he took photos of these mailboxes from the 70’s. In the photo, these haphazard boxes all have names on them. It was symbolic of all these bachelor men living in Chinatown in the 1970’s, who were separated from their families in China. Corky makes you think about things that you overlook or take for granted. I am forever appreciative that our paths crossed. I think he will transcend his own death and continue to inspire people for generations to come. I think that's what an important character does in a film. Corky is that person.
Photographic Justice: the Corky Lee Story is near completion. Find out more at www.photographicjustice.com
Interview published as part of the Orchid Pavilion’s series Immaterial