Photographer Baldwin Lee, M.I.T. graduate and a Chinese American, had no plans to be a photographer much less photograph African American life in the American South. His work is currently on exhibit in NYC’s Howard Greenberg Gallery.
The NYT Opinion Guest Essay: The Troubling and Humane Photography of Baldwin Lee By Margaret Renkl Oct. 31, 2022
The first paragraph grabs you.
"NASHVILLE — When Baldwin Lee set out in March 1983 to photograph the American South, he was a stranger in a strange land. The New York-born son of Chinese immigrants, he had moved to Knoxville to establish the photography program at the University of Tennessee. When he left on his first of many photographic trips across the South, he was open to whatever subjects might draw his attention. “I had no agenda, no plan,” he told The New Yorker’s Chris Wiley. 'I took pictures of everything: landscapes, architecture, close-ups, still lifes, pictures at night, people, old, young, white, Black, poor, rich. I just wanted to see.' "
The New Yorker: Baldwin Lee’s Extraordinary Pictures From the American South
By Chris Wiley, Oct. 2, 2022
Baldwin Lee – by Hunters Point Press
Interview by Jessica Bell Brown
Essay by Casey Gerald
Edited by Barney Kulok
9 - 12 13+ Art/Music Social Studies/History Library Baldwin Lee, photographer African American South photographs