The photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration Historical Section from 1935-1942 produced a large body of photographic work that now resides in the Library of Congress. These photographs serve as valuable visual resources for depicting an economically deprived section of America's population during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Some of these photographers, like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, are widely recognized for their work, while others remain obscure. Russell Lee falls into the latter category, although he contributed the largest number of captioned photographs to the FSA photographic files.
This paper explores Lee's photographic techniques in relation to other FSA photographers who addressed similar subject matter. In order to limit the scope of my study, I chose to investigate the photographs Lee took in southeastern Louisiana in April 1939 as part of an assignment on strawberry farming. This batch of approximately 150 black and white photographs offers insight into Lee's working methods. Lees imagery reveals the similarities and differences between his photographic style and that of his FSA colleagues, such as Evans, Lange, and Ben Shahn.
I will argue that Lee's anonymity is the result of his approach to photography, privileging a large quantity of pictures of a given subject or location over searching for a single remarkable image that captured the essence of the situation. His photographs, while technically precise, often lack the visual impact found in the work of Evans and Lange. Though Lee's artistic vision may not have been as keen as some of his colleagues', Lee's straightforward pictorial style bestows a hitherto undervalued importance to his contribution to the FSA photographic files. He captured ordinary moments in the lives of human beings suffering during one of America's bleakest periods. In southeastern Louisiana, Lee took photographs of migrant workers at home and in the fields. He also visited a strawberry auction and documented the economic aspects of the agribusiness, while paying attention to such details as the shipping of strawberries on refrigerated rail cars. This collection of photographs underlines Lees fondness for filling his compositions with more visual information rather than less.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04062004-154900 |
| Date | 07 April 2004 |
| Creators | Mitchell, Brent |
| Contributors | Patricia Lawrence, Darius Spieth, Thomas Neff |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04062004-154900/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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