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Matinee: 'Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story'
17 August 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 566th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story.
This is just the 2:02 trailer for the documentary on Corky Lee's life by Jennifer Takaki, who followed him from event to event. Lee, who passed away in 2021 when Covid-19 took his life, himself documented the lives and struggles of Asian Americans.
As Takaki puts in in this Q&A session after a London screening of the film, he did this because it had to be done and he wanted to do it, not because he was paid to do it. He would cover a banquet without a contract and not even get a plate a food for it. He would send photos with no bill to a struggling musician whose set he covered at some nightclub.
Takaki says no one realized it at the time but he was documenting the history of Asian Americans. And his archive, unrestrained by financial contracts, has an rich authenticity.
He had a love for history, she says, remembering how she turned to the stranger next to her in a theater to ask where the bathroom was. It was Lee. "I know where the men's room is," he told her, "but not the women's." She laughed that she could find it if she found the men's room. But he knew the history of the building, that it had once been an all-boys school and the women's bathroom could be on another floor.
It is difficult to appreciate that history is no only made in grandiose moments but everyday but everyone. Asian Americans are fortunate Corky Lee felt obliged to document the history they were making.
The 55:05 documentary can be streamed by members on PBS.