• Chicot farms
• Lake Dick project
• Cooperative store, Lake Dick
• Children of Lake Dick
• Sorghum, Lake Dick
• Soybean hay, Lake Dick
• Cotton pickers, Lake Dick
• Weighing in, Lake Dick
• Cotton gin, Lake Dick
• Lehi
• Lakeview
• Stores

Russell Lee was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1903. He obtained a degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University, but abandoned that career to try his hand as a landscape painter in Woodstock, New York.

In 1935 Russell Lee took up photography and was instantly successful. Within a year he was hired as an FSA photographer. Russell Lee's skills as a chemist allowed him to "push" film beyond its normal limits. He was particularly skilled at working in dim light and at faster shutter speeds.

In 1939 Russell Lee married his second wife, Jean Smith, a Dallas journalist. Thereafter the two worked together as a team.

Russell Lee was the most prolific of the Arkansas FSA photographers. Many of his Arkansas photographs are of government resettlement projects and are intended to portray these in a positive light. Stryker and his photographers were under increasing pressure to go beyond merely depicting poverty to demonstrate that federal programs were effective.

Learn about other Arkansas photographers, such as Arthur Rothstein and Carl Mydans.