The man who filled in the missing gap

Together Lee and Zhou had many fond memories, including a road trip to New Orleans in 2010 on which the two interviewed and photographed Vietnamese shrimpers and fishers gravely affected by the oil spill following an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that year.

"He shaped my life, while I was a big part of him as well," said Zhou, who has been described by Lee's closest friends as "always watching his back".

After seeing some of Lee's pictures, Zhou flew to Locke, in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, to see a memorial toilet garden. It was built by Connie King, a Chinese American who saw toilets being thrown out by newcomers to her town, 50 kilometers south of Sacramento, the starting point for the western section of the 1869 Transcontinental Railroad.

"They told Connie that they were turfing out the toilets because they didn't want to sit on toilets that the Chinese had sat on," Zhou said. King salvaged the toilets and planted vegetables and flowers in them. The result is a memorial garden honoring those who not only built the railroad but also helped make California the biggest agricultural state. King died in 2009.

Like the mailboxes photographed by Lee, the toilets were once used by members of a bachelor Chinese immigrant society, formed as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The law, barring all Chinese laborers from entering the state, was signed by president Chester Arthur on May 6, 1882－four days before the 13th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

"The act was only repealed in 1943, when China became an ally of the US in World War II," said Corky, whose father joined the Army Air Corps before serving under the command of General Claire Lee Chennault in the China Burma Indian Theater of the war.

"To ride with punches" was how Chan, Lee's longtime friend, describes the way with which the photographer sought to mitigate the emotional toll he inflicted upon himself doing what he was doing.

But certain things were always on his mind. In 1983, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was bludgeoned to death by Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler car plant supervisor and Michael Nitz, his stepson, a laid-off car worker. Blaming Japan's car industry for the unemployment of American workers, they killed Chin, thinking he was Japanese. Neither served prison terms.

In 2017, 34 years after Lee took pictures of the angry protesters demanding justice for Chin, he organized a candlelight vigil in front of the Ebens house in Henderson, Nevada. He wrote in a Facebook entry in June last year: "Chin would be 65 years old had he survived ... I will spend several moments remembering him, because it could have been me."

Lee was not killed by the most virulent racism, but rather, by "government neglect and institutional racism", Na said."The Trump administration's response to the pandemic was extremely poor, especially when it comes to marginalized communities," he said. "The vaccine was rolled out in mid-December and Corky, who was 73, never got the shot."

The photographer was back to filming in March last year wearing a mask, after a brief homestay in February.

Na remembers his conversation with Lee in 2001, not long after his wife Margaret Dea died of cancer."She would ask him, 'Why do you have to be the only one always out there taking photos?' and he would reply, 'Because I don't know anyone else who's doing it'," Na said. "Guilt was certainly something he carried with him at the time.

"The hard work also killed him. For many years he would go to photograph six or seven different events around town on a single day while working his day job at a printing company."