Russell Lee: The Early Color Photographs

Russell Lee (1903-1986) began working as a photographer for the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1936. He continued with the organization for the next six years as it became the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later part of the Office of War Information (OWI). His tenure was longer than any other photographer for the organization and his output the most prolific. He shot over 25,000 of the 175,000 negatives in the FSA–OWI Black-and-White Negatives Collection. 

While his most iconic shots have been in the public consciousness for almost a century and the FSA-OWI collections have now been digitized and are available for free, the vast majority of his work will likely remain unknown to the general public unless curated into more finite and convenient experiences. The aim of this series of books is to provide those experiences and allow the reader to explore different aspects of Russell Lee’s monumental work in depth. 

This first book presents all 183 color images by Russell Lee that are part of the FSA–OWI Color Photographs Collection. They move with Lee all over the country as his assignments lead him to a rural dance in Oklahoma, a peach orchard in Colorado, a harvest in Pie Town, New Mexico, the building of the Shasta dam, a scrap depot in Montana, and a Japanese American internment camp in California.