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Capturing The Ordinary: Russell Lee In Southeastern Louisiana, Brent Mitchell

LSU Master's Theses

The photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration Historical Section from 1935-1942 produced a large body of photographic work that now resides in the Library of Congress. These photographs serve as valuable visual resources for depicting an economically deprived section of America's population during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Some of these photographers, like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, are widely recognized for their work, while others remain obscure. Russell Lee falls into the latter category, although he contributed the largest number of captioned photographs to the FSA photographic files. This paper explores Lee's photographic techniques in …