Monday, April 25, 2022 – HE TRAVELED TO MEMORIALIZE THE AMERICAN SCENE

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https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/04/28/rihs-lecture-chandigarh-city-beautiful

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON PROGRAM & REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR ZOOM

MONDAY, APRIL  25, 2022


658th Issue

RUSSELL LEE


DEPRESSION ERA

PHOTOGRAPHER

WIKIPEDIA

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Russell Werner Lee (July 21, 1903 – August 28, 1986)^[1][2] was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression. His images documented the ethnography of various American classes and cultures.

Conversation at the General Store, near Jeanerette, Louisiana, 1938

The son of Burton Lee and his wife Adeline Werner, Lee grew up in Ottawa, Illinois. He attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana for high school. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.[3]

Lee started working as a chemist, but gave up the position to become a painter. Originally he used photography as a precursor to his painting, but soon became interested in photography for its own sake. He recorded the people and places around him. Among his earliest subjects were Pennsylvanian bootleg mining and the Father Divine cult.[4]

In the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and Walker Evans. Stryker provided direction and bureaucratic protection to the group, leaving the photographers free to compile what in 1973 was described as “the greatest documentary collection which has ever been assembled.”[3] Lee created some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940.

Segregated facilities, Oklahoma City, OK, 1939

Llano de San Juan church, New Mexico, 1940

Over the spring and summer of 1942, Lee was one of several government photographers to document the forced relocation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. He produced more than 600 images of families waiting to be removed and their later lives in various detention facilities, most located in isolated areas of the interior of the country.

After the FSA was defunded in 1943, Lee served in the Air Transport Command (ATC). During this period, he took photographs of all the airfield approaches used by the ATC to supply the Armed Forces in World War II. In 1946 and 1947, he worked for the United States Department of the Interior (DOI), helping the agency compile a medical survey in communities involved in mining bituminous coal. He created over 4,000 photographs of miners and their working conditions in coal mines.[6] In 1946, Lee completed a series of photos focused on a Pentecostal Church of God in a Kentucky coal camp.

While completing the DOI work, Lee also continued to work under Stryker. He produced public relations photographs for Standard Oil of New Jersey
.
In 1947 Lee moved to Austin, Texas and continued photography. In 1965 he became the first instructor of photography at the University of Texas there.

Japanese American internment, 1942

ki-Okinaga-Hayakawa-1942-Russell-Lee.jpg

Los Angeles, California. Japanese-American child who is being evacuated with his [sic] parents to Owens Valle

Luggage – Japanese American internment.jpg

Los Angeles (vicinity), California. Baggage of Japanese-Americans evacuated from certain West coast areas under United States Army war emergency order, who have arrived at a reception center at a racetrack.

FSA-migratory-labor-camp-Nyssa-OR-8c25082.jpg

Nyssa, Oregon. FSA (Farm Security Administration) mobile camp. Japanese mother and father with their American-born children in tent-home. One of the sons of this family is in the United States Army. Two of the sons were studying engineering at an American university before the evacuation and are now greatly worried about possibilities of continuing their education

LonnieJohnsonByRussellLee1941Crop.jpg

Lonnie Johnson playing in Chicago, 1941.Original caption: “Entertainers at Negro tavern. Chicago, Illinois”.

MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY

Summit Hotel on Lexington Avenue
CENTRAL NURSES RESIDENCE
WAS ON SITE OF NOW 475-455 MAIN STREET
NANCY BROWN AND ARON EISENPRISS GOT IT RIGHT!!

Sources

Wikipedia
Wikimedia Commons

Edited by Deborah Dorff
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C)
 PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS

FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD

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