E. Tammy Kim writes about “Corky Lee’s Asian America,” which collects hundreds of pictures that the photographer shot in New York’s Chinatown from the early nineteen-seventies to the end of his life, in 2021.
One of his clients greeted us at the door and led us up a steep, dimpled staircase. Whatever the apartment’s original shape, it had been divided, then subdivided, using drywall and curtains, into a grid of cubbies. A dozen Chinese immigrants lived there, strangers rendered intimates by their hot, cramped quarters. They were seniors, middle-aged workers, young guys, and children, all sleeping within earshot of one another, sharing a bathroom and a kitchen.
How surprising, then, to see in the book an abstract vertical in Kodak Ektachrome: a crosshatch of green, red, and brown fire escapes. Though Lee considered himself a journalist, he wasn’t above stage management. There’s a fun shot, from 1987, of three dolled-up teen-age girls in a bathroom—lace, tulle, big bows, big hair—taking what appears to be an illicit smoke break during a high-school dance. “Although none were smokers, Corky asked them to pose with a cigarette,” the caption reads.
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