Russell Lee
Documentary photography during the Depression era.
Russell Lee was born on July 21, 1903, in Ottawa, Illinois. His parents' divorce, the death of his mother, and supervision by three successive guardians created an unsettled childhood for Lee. In 1917 he was sent to Culver Military Academy (CMA), which provided some stability in his life. He attended CMA until 1921, then enrolled at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1925 with a degree in chemical engineering and joined the Certainteed Products Company in Marseilles, Illinois.
In 1927 he married painter Doris Emrick. The following year, Lee was transferred to Kansas City, where he became so bored with his job he resigned to pursue painting. After moving to San Francisco in 1929, the Lees resettled a year later in an artists colony in Woodstock, New York. Lee subsequently became increasingly frustrated with his limitations as a painter. In 1935, at the suggestion of a friend, he bought his first camera and his enthusiasm for photography quickly grew. He explored the technical aspects of the craft, experimenting with developing chemicals, exposure speeds, and flash photography techniques.
Lee began taking documentary photographs in Woodstock in 1935 and went to Pennsylvania to photograph bootleg coal miners. The winter of 1935 found him in New York City documenting the poor and their living conditions. In 1936, Lee joined the photographic staff of the Resettlement Administration, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA). During his FSA years, Lee traveled throughout the United States, documenting life in rural and urban communities. He developed a flash technique that enabled him to take innovative and candid interior photographs. In 1943, Lee received a captain's commission in the Air Transport Command (ATC). He traveled military transport routes taking aerial photographs. About a year after leaving the ATC, in 1946, Lee was hired by the Department of the Interior's Coal Mines Administration to take photographs for a major report on health and safety conditions in bituminous coal mines. The Lees moved to Austin, Texas, in 1947. At the request of his former FSA chief, Roy Stryker, Lee worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey, documenting the oil industry at home and overseas. Lee continued with industrial photography projects throughout the 1950's, visiting Saudi Arabia and Europe. He contributed to Fortune magazine and was an associate staff member of the prestigious Magnum photographic cooperative. Between 1949 and 1962, Lee conducted a photographic workshop at the University of Missouri. In 1950, Lee worked with The University of Texas on a study of Spanish-speaking people in Texas. He contributed to the Texas Observer and between 1952 and 1957 covered Ralph Yarborough's election campaigns. His coverage of a 1956 Texas primary campaign appeared in The New York Times. The September, 1961, issue of Texas Quarterly published 150 of some 4,000 photographs taken during a two-and-a-half month visit to Italy.
In 1965, The University of Texas at Austin presented an exhibition of Lee's photographs and he was invited to join the university's art faculty as an instructor in photography. He taught until his retirement in 1973. Russell Lee died on August 28, 1986.
