Russell Lee:
1930s & 40s Vintage Photographs
from the FSA and the Standard Oil Project

Exhibit: June-July, 1999


   

RUSSELL LEE
"Detail of Side of Earl Pauley's Farmhouse near Smithland, Iowa"
1936, vintage silver print
6 1/2 x 9 11/16.

RUSSELL LEE
"Automatic Drilling, Bay City, Texas"
July, 1948, vintage silver print
8 1/2 x 5.

   

RUSSELL LEE
"Celiol Falls, Oregon"
September 1941, vintage FSA silver print
6 3/4 x 9 1/4.

RUSSELL LEE
"Spectators at Circus Show, Midland,TX"
September, 1947, vintage silver print
6 1/2 x 8 1/2.

   

RUSSELL LEE
"Hop Picker, Washington"
September 1941, vintage FSA silver print
9 x 7.

RUSSELL LEE
"Singing at Sunday School"
1940, vintage FSA silver print
6 3/4 x 8 3/4.

   

RUSSELL LEE
"Leaving the Grocery Store at Casa Grande Valley Farms, Pinal County, Arizona. May 1940"
1940, vintage silver print
9 1/16 x 7 3/8.

RUSSELL LEE
"Oil Station And House, Gemmel, Minn."
August, 1937, vintage FSA silver print
7 1/4 x 7 1/2.

   

RUSSELL LEE
"Main Store, Tropic, Utah"
Nov. 1940, vintage FSA silver print
7 x 9.

RUSSELL LEE
"The Schmidt Family, Members of the Mineral King Cooperative Farm, Tulare County, California"
1940, vintage silver print
7 x 9.



Biographical information:

In 1927 Russell Lee married painter Doris Emrick and soon began painting. Shortly thereafter the two moved to a small artist's community in Woodstock, NY. Over the next few years Lee struggled with painting and in 1935 he bought a camera to try to help him visually. He fell in love with photography.

During his stay in Woodstock, Lee began taking photographs that reflected his concerns for the struggling working class. In 1936 he became interested in a group of photographers in Washington D.C. that were doing socially documentary work. As a result, Lee met with Roy Stryker, the director of the photography project for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Stryker hired Lee as well as Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and others to create a body of proganda photographs to document the success of federal rural relief projects. Soon Lee was photographing throughout the Midwest for the FSA documenting the plight of farmers through the Great Depression and droughts of the 1930s. In the midst of all of his traveling, Lee's marriage to Doris ended and in 1938 he met and married newspaper reporter Jean Smith. They began working together, Lee taking the photographs and Jean writing short essays about the images. By 1940 Lee was known as one of the best photographers working for the FSA.

During the next several years Lee, like many FSA photographers, helped the government with the war effort by taking photographs for the Air Transport Command. When the war ended Lee took a short break and then did some more work for the government photographing the conditions of the coal miners in the Rocky Mountains and Appalachia. Between 200 and 300 of Lee's images were used in the fight to clean up the coal industry. In 1947 Roy Stryker contacted Lee about taking some industrial photographs for a project he was developing for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Lee's images concentrated on how oil and it's products related to peoples everyday lives. Over the next several years Lee focused on industrial photography. In 1965 he began teaching at the University of Texas and this remained one of his passions until he retired in 1973.


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