Mary Jane Appel - Russell Lee: A Photographers Life and Legacy

RUSSELL LEE

A Photographers Life and Legacy

MARY JANE APPEL

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Copyright 2021 by Mary Jane Appel and Library of Congress

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First Edition

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Jacket design: Jared Oriel

Jacket photographs: (front) Secondhand tires displayed for sale. San Marcos, Texas, March 1940, by Russell Lee / Library of Congress; (spine) Russell Lee, c. 194245, courtesy of the Wittliff Collections, Texas State University

Book design by Ellen Cipriano

Production manager: Lauren Abbate

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Appel, Mary Jane, author. | Hayden, Carla Diane, 1952 writer of foreword. | Library of Congress, issuing body.

Title: Russell Lee : a photographers life and legacy / Mary Jane Appel.

Other titles: Russell Lee (Liveright Publishing Corporation)

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company ; [Washington, D.C.] : Library of Congress, [2021] | Introduction by Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020027626 | ISBN 9781631496165 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781631496172 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Lee, Russell, 19031986. | PhotographersUnited StatesBiography. | United States. Farm Security AdministrationHistory.

Classification: LCC TR140.L438 A77 2021 | DDC 770.92 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027626

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FOR STEVE

1. Sign painter, Sioux City, Iowa, December 1936.

I N 1963, almost two decades after compiling the largest visual record in American history, under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Roy Stryker recalled, I was pretty unsophisticated when I took that job as far as how to pick a photographer. . . . I began to realize it was curiosity, it was a desire to know, it was the eye to see the significance around them. Stryker had an inherent knack for recognizing talent and hired individuals who would become some of the twentieth centurys most famous photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks. But it was a less well-known photographerRussell Leewho would most closely share Strykers vision for creating a thorough pictorial record of America through these photographs.

Out of almost 15 million photographs in the Librarys collections, those in the Farm Security AdministrationOffice of War Information Collection stand out as some of the most powerful and enduring. Originally conceived as a public relations effort for New Deal government programs aimed at helping agricultural workers, the archive morphed into a massive study of America and Americans, eventually numbering about 175,000 black and white negatives.