The Corky Lee Story: The Art of Photography, Photographic Justice & Social Change with Documentary Filmmaker Jennifer Takaki

In this episode, filmmaker Jennifer Takaki talks about her documentary “Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story” on the photographer and journalist Corky Lee who over 50 years and with almost a million pictures to his credit managed to combine art, images, and photographs with politics as well as awareness, inclusion, and social change.

In fact, Corky retook the 1869 photo of the railroad celebration and made it more diverse, inclusive, and true to fact by - this time around - not excluding Asian faces from the image even though many Chinese workers had been involved in the work and labor of the railroad construction.

Moreover, Jennifer explains how Corky was very passionate, persistent, dedicated and very good at his art of photography while always being at the right place at the right time. A picture speaks a thousand words, and, in this case, it also caught what had often eluded mainstream media at the time and has framed and reframed our knowledge and understanding of historical events.

Finally, his influence needs to be put into perspective as in the lens and framework of his times, it was rather uncommon for people and society to be diverse and inclusive in their practices. At the same time, by being open to and even expanding his community to include many others, he has always brought attention to a lot of cultural festivities and celebrations in New York.