Baldwin Lee - by Barney Kulok (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"One of the great overlooked luminaries of American picture-making." -The New Yorker

In 1983, Baldwin Lee (born 1951) left his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his 4 × 5 view camera and set out on the first of a series of road trips to photograph the American South. The subjects of his pictures were Black Americans: at home, at work and at play, in the street and in nature. This project would consume Lee--a first-generation Chinese American--for the remainder of that decade, and it would forever transform his perception of his country, its people, and himself. The resulting archive from this seven-year period contains nearly 10,000 black-and-white negatives. This monograph, *Baldwin Lee*, presents a selection of 88 images edited by the photographer Barney Kulok, accompanied by an interview with Lee by the curator Jessica Bell Brown and an essay by the writer Casey Gerald. Arriving almost four decades after Lee began his journey, this publication reveals the artist's unique commitment to picturing life in America and, in turn, one of the most piercing and poignant bodies of work of its time.

Review Quotes

Make[s] the case that he is one of the great overlooked luminaries of American picture-making.--Chris Wiley "New Yorker"

The warmth and soulfulness of his work is not the result of intellectual effort; it's grounded in understanding, a combination of intensity and restraint, and, surely, a shared sense of otherness.--Vince Aletti "Photograph"

Baldwin Lee is a very radical act of goodness and justice. Because in a country that does not recognise the value of Black lives, especially poor ones, with this monograph, Lee is saying: look over here, America, at this evident failure of equal opportunity and protection. Look very closely at what you don't want to see, at whom you fail to recognise and celebrate as your own.--Sala Elise Patterson "British Journal of Photography"

I discovered that I was a political being," he said. He grasped, thanks in part to his own upbringing as the son of Chinese immigrants, the oppressive systems and subtle conditioning that shaped the lives of those he met. He saw his camera less as a propaganda machine and more as a tool to testify that these lives, mundane and epic and "graceful," mattered.--Casey Gerald "Atlantic"