Russell Lee
Born Russell Werner Lee in Ottawa, Illinois, USA in 1903, he qualified as a Chemical Engineer from Leehigh University, Pennsylvania in 1925. In 1929 he abandoned a career in Marseilles, Illinois with the composition roofing company, Certainteed Products, to take up painting, initially in San Francisco, but within a year moving to Woodstock, New York.
He purchased his first camera in 1935, a 35mm Contax. At first this was to help him in his painting and draftsmanship, but he soon began to document the effects of the Depression, drawing on his chemical background as he developed his approach to photography. In 1936, he joined the staff of the Resettlement Administration (RA), which became the Farm Securities Adminsitration (FSA) in 1937. Under the direction of Roy Stryker, the FSA documented the effects of the Depression as effective propaganda for Roosevelt’s New Deal programme. Among the many projects he worked on for the FSA, Lee documented San Augustine, Texas in 1939 and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940.
In 1942, he left the FSA to join the Overseas Technical Unit of the Air Transport Command. After the Second World War, he accepted an assignment from the Department of the Interior to document both conditions in bituminous coal mines in the USA and the mining communities.
In 1947, he rejoined Stryer, working in public relations for Standard Oil New Jersey. Whilst continuing this work, through the 1950s and 60s he also developed a number of social documentary projects in Texas, where he was now living. He died in 1986.
American Mining Communities
from: Photography
Mining communities in West Virginia and Kentucky, USA, documented in the 1940s by one of the key photographers, who, along with Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and others, developed the classic Farm Securities Administration photography in the 1930s.