The Photographs of Russell Lee

Description

Providing a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and Second World War, each volume in the Fields of Vision series focuses on a single photographer whose vision helped shape the collective identity of America and influenced the way we look at photographs in the 21st century. All of the images in each volume are chosen from the Library of Congress’s renowned collection of Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI) photographs.

Russell Lee (1903–1986) left a career as a chemical engineer to become a painter and later a photographer. In 1936, he was hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic project, where he created some of the most iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas, and Pie Town, New Mexico, as well as the eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast in 1942.

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Histoire de la photographie
• Collections photographiques
• Photographie Créative
• Individual Photographers
• Permanent Collections
• Exhibitions
• Catalogs
• Collections
• Historical
• Catalog
• General officer
• Photography
• Collection
• General
• History

Informations

• Publié par: D Giles Limited
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913875084
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 20 Mo

Extrait

fields of vision
The Photographs of Russell Lee
The approximately 175,000 film negatives and transparencies in the Library of Congress s
collection from the Farm Security Administration (FSA), later the Office of War Information (OWI),
provide a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and World War II.
This government photography project, headed by Roy E. Stryker, employed many relatively
unknown names who later became some of the twentieth-century s best-known photographers,
such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and
Carl Mydans. Initially conceived to document government loans to farmers and their subsequent
resettlement in suburban communities, the project expanded to create a visual record of
agricultural workers across the United States. Later, Stryker s photographers recorded both rural
and urban centers as the nation prepared for World War II.
Each volume in the Fields of Vision series presents fifty striking images that show how
the particular vision of these photographers helped shape the collective identity of America.
Their evocative pictures transport the viewer to American homes, farms, and streets of the
1930s and 1940s, while offering a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that was
later to blossom on the pages of Look and Life magazines. For many Americans of the pre-
television age, the diversity and complexity of their country was defined by the lenses of
these men and women.
Front cover illustration:
Mexican barber, San Antonio, Texas, March 1939.
fields of vision
The Photographs of Russell Lee

fields of vision
The Photographs of Russell Lee
the library of congress, washington, d.c.
g
Copyright © 2021, 2008 The Library of Congress
First published in 2008 by giles
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No part of the contents of this book may be
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Series Editor and Project Manager: Amy Pastan
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs
Division, author. |
Container of (work): Lee, Russell, 1903-1986.
Photographs. Selections
(Library of Congress) | United States. Farm Security
Administration,
sponsoring body. | United States. Office of War
Information, sponsoring
body. | Library of Congress, issuing body.
Title: The photographs of Russell Lee.
Description: Washington, D.C. : The Library of
Congress, [2021] | Series:
Fields of vision | Republication of the Library of
Congress 2008 edition
with the introduction removed. | Description based
on print version record
and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not
viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021005172 | ISBN 9781913875084
(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986. | Library of
Congress--Photograph
collections. | Documentary photography--United
States. | Portrait
photography--United States. | United States--Social
life and
customs--1918-1945--Pictorial works.
Classification: LCC TR820.5 | DDC 779--dc23 LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005172
Frontispiece : Ice for sale, Harlingen, Texas, February 1939 (detail).
Opposite : Sign, Harlingen, Texas, February 1939 (detail).
Page VI : Pie-eating contest at a 4-H Club fair, Cimarron, Kansas, August 1939 (detail).

Fields of Vision
Preface
The Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information
( FSA-OWI ) Collection at the Library of Congress offers a detailed
portrait of life in the United States from the years of the Great
Depression through World War II. Documenting every region
of the country, all classes of people, and focusing on the
rhythms of daily life, from plowing fields to saying prayers,
the approximately 171,000 black-and-white and 1,600 color
images allow viewers to connect personally with the 1930s and
1940s. That s what great photographs do. They capture people
and moments in time with an intimacy and grace that gently
touches the imagination. Whether it is a fading snapshot or
an artfully composed sepia print, a photograph can engage
the mind and senses much like a lively conversation. You may
study the clothes worn by the subject, examine a tangled facial
expression, or ponder a landscape or building that no longer
exists, except as captured by the photographer s lens long
ago. Soon, even if you weren t at a barbeque in Pie Town, New
Mexico, in the 1940s or picking cotton in rural Mississippi in the
1930s, you begin to sense what life there was like. You become
part of the experience.
This is the goal of Fields of Vision. Each volume presents a
portfolio of little-known images by some of America s greatest
photographers-including Russell Lee, Ben Shahn, Marion Post
Wolcott, John Vachon, Jack Delano, and Esther Bubley-allowing
readers actively to engage with the extraordinary photographic
work produced for the FSA-OWI. Many of the photographers
featured did not see themselves as artists, yet their pictures
have a visual and emotional impact that will touch you as deeply
as any great masterwork. These iconic images of Depression-
era America are very much a part of the canon of twentieth-
century American photography. Writer James Agee declared that
documentary work should capture the cruel radiance of what
is. He believed that inside each image there resided a personal
test, the hurdle of you, the would be narrator, trying to ascertain
what you truly believe is. The photographs in Fields of Vision
invite the reader to contemplate the cruel radiance that lives
in each of the images.
The fifty images presented here are just a brief road map
to the riches of the Farm Security Administration Collection.
If you like what you see, you will find more to contemplate at
our website, www.loc.gov . The FSA-OWI collection is a public
archive. These photographs were created by government
photographers for a federally funded program. Yet, they outlived
the agency they served and exceeded its mission. Evoking the
heartbreak of a family who lost its home in the Dust Bowl or
the humiliation of segregation in the South, they transcend the
ordinary-and that
W. Ralph Eubanks
Former Director of Publishing
Library of Congress