Getting Asian-Americans Into the Picture (part 2 of 2)

By SARAH BOXER 

Sept. 11 gave Mr. Lee a new mission. On Sept. 15 a group of
Pacific Asians and South Asians got together to discuss
their fears. Sikhs were being attacked in the United States
because of their turbans and dark complexions. How could
they tell the world they were not Taliban? That evening, at
a candlelight vigil in Central Park, Mr. Lee took pictures
of Sikhs wrapped in the American flag holding signs against
racial profiling and terrorism. The picture won an award
from the New York Press Association. One judge commented:
"Unusual juxtaposition of patriotism and ethnicity. The
subject's devious stare into the lens is compelling."

And so Mr. Lee's work continues. 

In July, he was at the
Armenian Church in Midtown Manhattan to photograph a
Tibetan festival honoring the Dalai Lama's 67th birthday.
He watched the Tibetans dancing and piling white and pale
yellow shawls on a table to be sent to the Dalai Lama. But
his attention was elsewhere. He took a picture of a Tibetan
girl with cornrows. He got on a chair to photograph how
some families, ignoring the hundreds of folding chairs
available, sat in circles on the floor to have their picnic
lunches. 

Mr. Lee is highly attuned to cultural clashes. At the
Tibetan festival, he pointed to the polo shirt he was
wearing, which had a bamboo pattern. "I thought it would be
a bad idea to wear this,"he said, since bamboo connotes
China. "I thought of changing before I came in,"he said,
noting that he had brought a "Free Tibet"T-shirt just in
case. But he didn't change. That would just be subscribing
to stereotyping, and also more laundry, he said. "Guys
think like that."Besides, he said, his camera bag has a
Tibetan logo on it, Tenba. 

At the festival, Mr. Lee was accompanied by Phuong Do, a
young Vietnamese-American photographer, who was taking
pictures of Mr. Lee taking pictures. She aimed her camera
as Mr. Lee photographed a monk listening to one of the
speakers. Mr. Lee lined up his shot so that a portrait of
the Dalai Lama on the wall was right between the two men.
"I wouldn't have noticed that,"she said. "Like other
photojournalists,"she added, "he is very specific about
what he wants."And what he wants is what Henri
Cartier-Bresson called a decisive moment. A decisive
cultural moment. 

"But is there really a decisive moment?"Ms. Do asked. "Or
do you make it?"She seemed skeptical of the kind of
telling tableaus that Mr. Lee is known for. "I'm interested
in the experience of being uprooted,"she said, and "since
I'm Asian I can understand the struggle of people of
color."For example, "I always get asked if I'm Japanese or
Chinese,"she said. "But when I take pictures I am
uncomfortable. I have just one little camera in this whole
room. And I am representing them."

Mr. Lee, who is from an earlier generation, has no such
worries about the limits of representation. What he minds
is the simple lack of representation, the invisibility of
Asian-Americans. 

While speaking to a class at the Asian American Writers'
Workshop on West 32nd Street, he told them frankly that
photography is propaganda. "When you frame a shot, you are
saying how people should see this."He also offered
professional advice: smile when you approach strangers to
take their picture. And in judging how far away the flash
on a disposable camera will work, remember that it is about
the diameter of a big round table at a Chinese restaurant. 

In July, 133 years after the finishing of the
transcontinental railroad, Mr. Lee decided to redo the
historical moment. The annual conference of the
Organization of Chinese Americans, which Mr. Lee calls the
Chinese B'nai Brith, had its annual convention in Salt Lake
City, where Mr. Lee got a Pioneer award for the last 30
years of his work. But first, part of the group visited
Topaz, a camp just south of Salt Lake City where Japanese
families were incarcerated during World War II. And then
the group headed north to Promontory Point to take a new
picture. This time there were 400 Chinese people, from Long
Island to Hawaii, present. Mr. Lee said he picked up a
bullhorn to organize the crowd. This, he told them, is
"photographic justice."