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| Russell Lee America faced its gravest domestic crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Under the courageous leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the nation began to confront massive unemployment, poor housing, and hunger. To rouse a nation's compassion, and public support for the Farm Security Administration (F.S.A.), a team of photographers was assembled to document the horrors farmers were enduring. Under the direction of Roy E. Stryker, the photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Russell Lee, were sent out in 1935 to, in Stryker's words, "introduce Americans to America." |
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Their documentary journey took them all over the country, resulting in 270,000 photos, many showing the incredible changes taking place in America, particularly the growth of the "other half": the wandering poor, sharecroppers, migrants, and unemployed. The F.S.A. photographers found plenty of despair in their work, but they also found courage and beauty, enough to help convince the rest of the country that the gaunt men, women, and children they were photographing were indeed worth saving.
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