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RUSSELL LEE’S TEXAS PHOTOGRAPHS by Carla Ellard  Russell Lee worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) from 1936 through 1942, traveling all over America on assignment, and providing a visual history and survey of American life. He joined other photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, and Marion Post Wolcott documenting the nation during a time of crisis with the Great Depression. Lee took more pictures than any of his colleagues— approximately 19,000 of the over 60,000 FSA photographs catalogued and housed at the Library of Congress are by Lee.1 Lee’s work is characterized by a deep concern for his fellow man. He also was an innovator in the field of photography with the use of multiple flash, which allowed him to better photograph the living conditions of the migratory workers and farm-workers west of the Mississippi. He produced several memorable photographs of Texas during his tenure with the FSA. Lee’s career with the FSA and his Texas images and the context in which they were produced made a lasting contribution to recording the culture of this state during an historic era. Russell Lee was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903. His childhood was marked with tragedy when he witnessed his mother being hit by a car which resulted in her death. Coming from a wellto -do family, he was cared for by his grandparents and legal guardians. Lee attended Culver Military Academy in Indiana and obtained a degree in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University . In 1927, he married Doris Emrick, a painter from Ottawa. Lee worked as a chemical engineer and plant manager but resigned after growing bored with the job. He and Doris moved to San Francisco, where Lee began to pursue painting, and two years later they moved to an artists’ colony in Woodstock, New York. 173 Lee struggled as a painter, since he was not adept at drawing, and produced many portraits with “deadpan expressions.”2 He abandoned painting quickly after a friend introduced him to the camera in 1935. His first camera was a 35mm Contax. Lee photographed his surroundings in Woodstock and also documented the effects of the Depression in New York. With his chemical engineering background, he enjoyed the technical aspects of photography involved in developing and printing his own images. Lee learned about the Resettlement Agency (RA) from a friend in New York in 1936. The RA was organized under the Department of Agriculture and was created in 1935 for resettling farm families living on overworked farmlands. Roy Stryker was the head of the Historical Section of the Division of Information and coordinated the efforts of photographers working for him at the time, such as Walker Evans, Carl Mydans and Dorothea Lange. The photographers’ role was to record the plight of the farm worker to produce “visual evidence of the need for government loans to rural areas of the country.”3 Stryker met with Lee and reviewed his portfolio but did not offer him a job immediately. Weeks later, when Carl Mydans quit the RA to work with Life magazine, Lee was commissioned. In 1937, the RA reorganized and became the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Stryker would send all the photographers shooting scripts via U.S. mail, as long-distance phone calls were costly and rare at that time. These scripts would describe or list the types of images that should be taken. In time, Lee was given more freedom with his shooting scripts as Stryker saw the results of his work. A man of independent means, Lee would be out in the field for extended periods of time in the Midwest. It was evident that Lee had great rapport with people and had the “uncanny ability to move into an area quietly and emerge a few days later with pictures that showed he had been completely accepted as a member of the community.”4 Lee would photograph every feature of a home or farm, documenting it in detail. Stryker described Lee’s photo174 Legends in Their Time––and Ours Still graphic style as an “engineer who wants to take it all apart and lay it on the table and say, ‘There, sir, there you are in all its parts.’”5 Under Stryker’s direction, the goals of photographing for the FSA had changed from documenting the plight of the farm worker to a mission of composing a historical record and introducing “America to Americans.”6 Stryker asked for broader...

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