Born in Brooklyn and growing up in Manhattan as a first-generation Chinese American, Baldwin Lee experienced racism firsthand.
Those experiences have shaped his photography, including a seven-year project documenting the American South focused on “Black Americans: at home, at work, and at play, in the street, and among nature.”
Baldwin Lee studied under Walker Evans and Minor White, before founding the University of Tennessee’s photography program in 1982.
Lee tells Kate Medley why he decided to put down the camera.
His first book, published in 2022, is titled Baldwin Lee.
Find Baldwin Lee’s work at his website, here.
Full credits:
Field Notes is hosted by Kate Medley.
Production by: Taemin Kim, Mirabela Kumar, Mikaela Voinov, Luna Hu, and Cole del Charco.
Interviews are recorded at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies.
Music this episode:
Plain Loafer by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 International License.