Weekend, June 18-19, 2022 – The compendium of photos of this country at the end of the great depression
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, JUNE 18-19, 2022
THE 705th EDITION
RUSSELL LEE
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
PHOTOGRAPHER
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Russell Werner Lee (July 21, 1903 – August 28, 1986)[1]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.
Life (Personal)
Russell Lee, photographed between 1935 and 1942
FSA photographers (from left) John Vachon, Arthur Rothstein, and Russell Lee with Roy Stryker
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.[2]
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.[3]
http://Grading cotton at cotton compress, Houston, Texas, 1939
Life (Photography Work)
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.”[2] 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.
Drinking at the bar, crab boil night, Raceland, Louisiana.
Lower Plaquemines House and Cistern 1938 Russell Lee.jpg
DestrehanNegroSchoolRussellLee1938.jpg
http://Storefront with seafood sign, Crowley, Louisiana, 1938
Street dancing, National Rice Festival, Crowley Louisiana, 1938
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.[4]
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.[5] In 1946, Lee completed a series of photos focused on a Pentecostal Church of God in a Kentucky coal camp.[6]
While completing the DOI work, Lee also continued to work under Stryker. He produced public relations photographs for Standard Oil of New Jersey.[2]
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.[2]
Los Angeles, California (1942) — Japanese-American family waiting for train to take them to the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, California.
Japanese Americans in their living quarters at a Farm Security Administration camp, July 1942, Rupert, Idaho. Photographer Russell Lee. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF34-073843-D) Densho Encyclopedia http://encyclopedia.densho.org/sources/en-russelll-apt-1/ (accessed May 13 2014).
Japanese Americans harvesting lettuce before mass removal, May 1942, San Benito County, California. Photographer Russell Lee. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF34- 072646-E) Densho Encyclopedia http://encyclopedia.densho.org/sources/en-russelll-lettuce-1/ (accessed May 13 2014).
Farm Security Administration mobile camp, July 1942, Shelley, Idaho. Photographer Russell Lee. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF34- 073778-D) Densho Encyclopedia http://encyclopedia.densho.org/sources/en-russelll-fsacamp-1/ (accessed May 13 2014).
Our friend Ron Crawford has produced a wonderful print of our cherry trees. Copies are available at the RIHS Kiosk.
WEEKEND PHOTO
Send your response to:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
West staircase leading to Vanderbilt Avenue entrance
Grand Central Terminal
Jinny Ewald, Hara Reiser, Jay Jacobson, Andy Sparberg,
Aron Eisenpreiss, Ed Litcher, Alexis Villafane, Gloria Herman, Vicki Feinmel, all got it right
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)
SOURCES
GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
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