Documentary photographer Russell Lee was born in Illinois in 1903. Trained as a chemical engineer and a painter, he took his first photographs in 1935. He worked for the Farm Security Administration from 1936 to 1942 and remained active in the field of documentary photography until 1977. Lee, who enjoyed a reputation for technical excellence and sensitivity to his subjects, moved to Austin, Texas, in 1947. Although he often traveled as a free-lance photographer and on assignment for magazines, corporations, the federal government, and the University of Texas, Austin remained his home and Texas a major focus of his work until his death in 1986. From 1965 to 1973 he taught photography at the University of Texas.
Collection consists of one oil painting of two men standing at a bar.
The collection is open for research.
Russell Lee Oil Painting, undated, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of
this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s
See also