Russell Lee

Russell Lee was a photographer hired in the 1940s by the national Farm Security Administration to document housing communities and rural areas. He was a documentary style photographer, showing things as they were in the environments they are. For his work with FSA he shot in black and white, usually 35mm and medium format, generally with strong focus on the subject and lesser focus in the background. His intent with working in the FSA was to show through his artwork the workers struck by drought and the great depression. it was a government sponsored way to use images and artistic skill to not only define and remember a time period but to raise awareness, give a greater population exposure to the concept of putting a bigger meaning to an individual piece of work. Russell Lee worked with several other photographers on this mission, including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.