Russell Lee (photographer)

Russell Lee ( born July 21, 1903 in Ottawa, Illinois, † 28 August 1986 in Austin, Texas ) was an American chemist and photographer best known as the photographer of the rural poor by 1935 and the working conditions of workers after the Second World War been.

Life

Russell Lee was of his training chemists and directed until 1929 an American chemical plant. From 1929 to 1935 he studied painting in San Francisco, Woodstock and New York City. From 1936 to 1942 Lee documented in the team of Roy Stryker and on behalf of the Farm Security Administration (FSA ), together with other photographers, among others, Ben Shan and Walker Evans American country and the impoverishment of the population during and after the Great Depression. Particularly well known were his documentaries about San Augustine, Texas, 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940.

After the Second World War, he documented on behalf of the U.S. government working conditions in American coal mines and produced image reports of refineries in the United States, Italy and the Middle East on behalf of Standard Oil in New Jersey. Approximately 80,000 of these images have been donated by the Exxon Corporation of the University of Louisville in Kentucky. 1947 Lee moved to Austin, Texas, and in 1965 he became the first Professor of Photography at the University of Texas.

Pictures

Cajun fiddler

More restful Farmer

Separate race facility, 1939

Former slave of slaves Horn

Llano de San Juan, New Mexico, 1940

Shepherd in Montana

U.S. Airman