Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy

Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy
Author :
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
Total Pages : 454
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781631496172
ISBN-13 : 1631496174
Rating : 4/5 (174 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy by : Mary Jane Appel

Download or read book Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy written by Mary Jane Appel and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russell Lee, a contemporary of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, now emerges from the shadows as one of the most influential documentary photographers in American history. The most prolific photographer of the Great Depression, Russell Lee has never been canonized for his iconic images. With this compulsively readable and definitive biography, historian and archivist Mary Jane Appel finally uncovers Lee’s rebellious life, tracing his journey from blue-blood beginnings to intrepid years of activism and pioneering creativity, through the incredible body of work he left behind. Born in the quintessential turn-of-the-century small town of Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903, Lee grew up in a wealthy family riddled with tragedy. He trained in college to become a chemical engineer, but was quickly drawn to Greenwich Village, where he developed an interest in social change and the arts. In 1935, the charismatic bohemian picked up a camera and a year later walked into the office of Roy Stryker, head of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), setting in motion a new life trajectory. The Historical Section aimed to capture rural poverty and the New Deal programs designed to abolish it. But Stryker imagined a much broader pictorial sourcebook for America, and no one on his legendary team—including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks, among others—would be more dedicated to reaching this goal than Russell Lee. As Appel demonstrates, Stryker and Lee developed a fascinating symbiotic relationship that resulted in a massive and complex breadth of work. Living out of his car from the fall of 1936 to mid-1942, Lee crisscrossed America’s back roads more than any photographer of his era. During this time, he shot 19,000 negatives that were captioned and printed—more than twice that of any other FSA photographer. He captured arresting images of sweeping dust storms and devastating floods, and chronicled the World War II home front and the last gasp of a small-town America that was inexorably vanishing, all the while focusing prophetically on issues like segregation and climate change, decades before they became national concerns. Meticulously weaving previously unseen letters and diaries, Appel brilliantly reveals why Lee’s profile has remained obscured, while his contemporaries became broadly celebrated. With more than 100 images spread throughout, Russell Lee speaks not only to the complexity of a pioneering documentary photographer’s work but to a seminal American moment captured viscerally like never before.


Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy Related Books

Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy
Language: en
Pages: 454
Authors: Mary Jane Appel
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-11-17 - Publisher: Liveright Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Russell Lee, a contemporary of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, now emerges from the shadows as one of the most influential documentary photographers in America
The Other Daughter
Language: en
Pages: 450
Authors: Lisa Gardner
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-09-28 - Publisher: Bantam

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Twenty years ago, Melanie Stokes was abandoned in a Boston hospital, then adopted by a wealthy young couple. Gifted with loving parents, a doting brother, and a
Picturing Migrants
Language: en
Pages: 269
Authors: James R. Swensen
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-10 - Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As time passes, personal memories of the Great Depression die with those who lived through the desperate 1930s. In the absence of firsthand knowledge, John Stei
Hope in Hard Times
Language: en
Pages: 260
Authors: Mary Murphy
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003 - Publisher: Montana Historical Society

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, John Vachon, and Marion Post Wolcott became some of the United States' best-known photographers through their pictures of Depress
Flash!
Language: en
Pages: 412
Authors: Kate Flint
Categories: Art
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A lively history of flash photography from the nineteenth century to the present that covers diverse topics like race, poverty, and the paparazzi. It surveys th