About the Photographer Russell Lee’s early works, relaying
sensitivity to human plight, socioeconomic dynamics, and the
unique representational capabilities of photography, made him an
attractive recruit for the New Deal’s Farm Administration
Security (1935-1944). Roy Stryker, head of the Information
Division of the FSA (known as the Resettlement Administration
until 1937), contracted photographers to garner support for
federal aide initiatives by publicizing rural and small town
destitution during the Depression in the United States. The
photographers employed under the FSA (which also included
Charlotte Brooks, Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Walker Evans,
Dorothea Lange, Jack Delano, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, Arthur
Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon, and Marion Post Wolcott)
produced images that greatly impacted how both policy-makers and
the general public understood the Depression. By addressing
public infrastructure and natural disaster with depictions of
everyday lives, Lee showed the nation’s complex