Russell Lee was born on July 21, 1903, in Ottawa, Illinois. His parents divorced and hid mother died, which caused him to go through many guardians making his childhood not very stable. He went to college and learned about military discipline and chemical engineering, neither of which he wanted to stick with. He also painted for a while before photographing. He bought his first camera, a 35mm Contax, to help him paint by photographing landscapes but then got hooked on it. He married Doris Emrick and later divorced her and got remarried to Jean Smith. Jean would talk to his subjects and make them feel at ease while being photographed and she also supplied all the captions for his photographs because she was a journalist and paid attention to that kind of stuff. He photographed the effects of the Depression and coal mines. His chemical knowledge helped him to make and mix his own chemicals for developing.
He joined two programs to help people during the Depression, which consisted of him taking pictures that were printed in newspapers and other things so that other people could know what was happening. While crossing the United States taking thses pictures his most famous series were from San Augustine, Texas and Pie Town, New Mexico. When the US joined WWII he went overseas and became a Major and received the Air Medal. After this, he wanted to document health and safety conditions in harmful coal mines around the United States. He made over 4000 images in a little over a year photographing this. After many other assignments, he just started photographing in Texas, where he lived, especially mental institutions. He got offered a teaching job at the University of Texas and took it and became more focused on that than his own photographs. He died
on August 28, 1986.
I like this because it shows this man very naturally in a place that today, we would have a difficult time being natural in. He seems to think its normal to have this segregation, while we are taught that that is bad.
I like this because everybody has a different expression on and is thinking about different things. I like the guy in the middle because you can't see his eyes and you can see from the way he is sitting that he isn't very open. And the little girl on the side adds a lot, but you don't see her at first, you look at first to the white dog.
I like this picture because they are all looking at the same thing but in a different way. Some look happy, some look mad, some just look like they don't care, and its interesting to see how different people see the same thing.
I like this picture because it shows effects of depression in young, innocent kids. They look happy just to be with each other, but they look dirty and don't have many toys around. Nowadays kids have many toys and are only happy when they are being entertained, but these kids look like they can entertain themselves.
I like this little girl because of just how she looks. She has an expression on that doesn't seem very happy, and she looks like she's longing for something, but I don't know I get the strange sense that she's happy. She seems to me like she is happy with her life, although it may not be very glamorous. But maybe that's just me.
