The Beauty of A Magical Photograph: Dal Chodha Speaks With Baldwin Lee For TenderChats

Photographer Baldwin Lee gave a talk in 2014 titled Looking is harder than it looks; a statement that may sound feeble at first, but nonetheless, comes from a place of sincerity. Lee would know this better than most as his collaborative still-life portraits documenting communities in the American south in the 1980s have prized him a spell-binding portfolio of work, gripping anyone lucky to come across it.

It all started with a trip in 1983 when Lee 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 subject of his pictures were Black Americans: at home, at work, and at play, in the street, and among nature. Forever transforming the artist's own perception of his country Lee, a first-generation Chinese American, became consumed by this project over the following decade, as his own views began to form along with his project.

As part of TenderBooks' bi-monthly series, TenderChats, hosted by Dal Chodha, the writer and SHOWstudio contributor interviewed photographer Baldwin Lee on his seminal work, discussing his own perception of his images, along with the feeling his art evokes. The conversation responded to the artist's recently launched self-titled monograph Baldwin Lee.

TenderChats is an ongoing series of 30-minute musings on the magic and permanence of printed matter. A twice-monthly series of live conversations will be hosted by writer and publisher Dal Chodha on the platform's InstagramTV @tenderbooks.