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Lee's work has documented key events in Asian American political history. His 1975 photograph of a Chinese American man being beaten by members of the New York City Police Department was featured by the New York Post. The day that the picture was published 20,000 people marched from Chinatown to City Hall protesting against police brutality.

Lee also photographed the protests that took place after the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Michigan. Chin was a young Chinese American man living in Detroit and was killed by Ronald Ebens, a superintendent at Chrysler Motors, and his stepson. The perpetrators attacked Chin, of Chinese descent, after mistaking him for being from Japan, as Japanese companies were blamed for the loss of American auto industry jobs.

Lee's title of "undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate" was self-proclaimed, but never questioned. His photographs documented the daily lives of Asian Americans as well as various historical moments in American history.

He also documented the lives of minority-American cultures and communities.

Han Zhang in the The New Yorker, summarized the cultural impact of his work as follows: "Lee was to Chinatown what Bill Cunningham was to the sartorialists of Manhattan, and what Roy DeCarava was to post-Renaissance Harlem."