An intimate portrait of the late, great Corky Lee, an award-winning photographer who communicated to the world the every | dG1faW1MRTE3SWdXSGM
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Short filmTranscript
00:00This is a story that hasn't really been told.
00:04Where do I begin?
00:06I've been photographing Asian Americans in New York City for 50 years.
00:10All these events, and who do you see?
00:13You see Corky Lee taking pictures.
00:18You believe what you see.
00:20In junior high school, they showed the photograph of the completion of the railroad.
00:23I didn't see any Chinese.
00:25The audacity, they didn't want the Chinese to be photographed as part of the celebration.
00:30What was called history was not everyone's history.
00:33That's what set my course.
00:35I figured my contribution was for me to use photography as an organizing tool for social change.
00:43He did it because it needed to be done.
00:45I'm practicing photographic justice.
00:49At the height of this protest against police brutality,
00:53one swung a billy club.
00:56The New York Times, they said they didn't know of any violence.
00:59The New York Post said they had their photographer there.
01:01I said, well, my photograph showed somebody got beaten up.
01:04Okay, kid, bring it in.
01:06And I made the front page.
01:08It's really making art and politics come together in a way
01:13that very few other photographers have been able to do.
01:16I don't think people need to remember who I am.
01:19I think it's more important that they remember the images.
01:252001.
01:27September 11th happened, and that shifted my focus.
01:31There are Asians in the same uniforms as much as white Americans.
01:38That famous photograph was taken in 1869,
01:43and I decided that I should do something about it.
01:46The oppression of the Chinese 145 years ago
01:49resolved through an act of photographic justice.
01:57If you're a photographer, keep shooting.