Russell
Lee Photographs is an exhibit exploring the life’s work of American documentary
photographer Russell Lee (1903 - 1986). Born in Illinois, Russell Lee was
trained as a chemical engineer and a painter. He took his first photographs
in 1935 and fell in love with the medium. He became interested in a group
of photographers in Washington D.C. that were doing socially documentary work
and met with Roy Stryker, the director of the photography project for the
Farm Security Administration (FSA). Stryker hired Lee as well as other famous
photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. Soon
Lee was photographing through the Midwest documenting the plight of farms
through the Great Depression and droughts of the 1930s. He worked for the
FSA from 1936 to 1942 and remained active in the field of documentary photography
until 1977. After the war Roy Styker contacted Lee about taking industrial
photographs for a project for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Over the next several
years Lee focused on this project. In 1947 he and his wife, Jean Smith, moved
to Austin, Texas, which remained his home and Texas a major focus of his work
until his death in 1986. From 1965 to 1973 he taught photography at the University
of Texas. Among his many series is included a study of Spanish-speaking people
of Texas (1949-1952) and many of the photographs from this project were taken
in San Angelo. An exhibition by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History,
The University of Texas at Austin, presented in partnership with Humanities
Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Yarborough
campaign onlookers, Mount Vernon, Texas, 1954.
San Angelo Museum
of Fine Arts
One Love Street
San Angelo, Texas 76903
Fax: (325) 658 - 6800
Phone: (325) 653 -
3333
e-mail:
museum@samfa.org