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Photographer Russell Lee : updated website



SWT?s Special Collections Department Announces Updated RUSSELL LEE
Research Website & On-line Photography Gallery

See press release on-line at :
http://www.library.swt.edu/swwc/wg/about/news.html

SAN MARCOS, Texas, June 28, 2002.  Sixty-four new images (including over
forty Farm Security Administration photographs) comprise a significant
recent addition to the Southwest Texas State University website
dedicated to the life and work of American photographer Russell Lee
(1903-1986), bringing this easily searchable collection to a total of
430 images.
View them all at www.library.swt.edu/swwc/wg/exhibits/rlee.

 Representing the Russell Lee Archive housed at the Wittliff Gallery of
Southwestern & Mexican Photography in San Marcos, Texas (part of SWT?s
Special Collections Department in the Alkek Library), the website is
unique in the way it brings together a comprehensive overview of the
photographer?s FSA work and extensive documentation of his entire life
and career. The Wittliff Gallery?s Lee print collection -- all of which
is viewable online -- includes the world?s largest existing group of his
vintage FSA prints, as well as seventy-eight especially noteworthy
photos of Lee himself, from childhood through his later years in Austin,
Texas. His widow, Jean Lee, along with Bill and Sally Wittliff, donated
the primary collection. The recent addition of sixty-four prints,
accompanied by Lee?s Leitz 35mm enlarger, was another gift of the
Wittliffs.

 The SWT Russell Lee website not only provides researchers access to
information about the Wittliff Gallery?s total Lee Archive, it also
points them to other important Lee collections, particularly those at
the Library of Congress and the Center for American History at the
University of Texas at Austin. Initially made possible by a grant from
the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in 1999, the SWT website
offers viewers images of Lee?s photographs, personal documents and
artifacts, as well as several of his paintings, including the unfinished
oil that marks the onset of his career as a photographer. Lee was most
famous for his images of rural life taken for the Farm Security
Administration in the late 1930s and early 1940s with a distinguished
group of colleagues that included Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and
Arthur Rothstein.

 The SWT Russell Lee site is valuable to those interested in a variety
of fields, such as photography, art history, political science,
agriculture, Mexican-American studies, sociology, Southwestern studies,
and more. Since its initial posting, more than 10,000 visitors have
browsed the hundreds of photographs and made use of the site?s powerful
searching capabilities. National and international inquiries sparked by
the website have resulted in many and varied publications of Lee?s
photos, from fourth-grade class projects to inclusion in scholarly books
and journals.

 Lee?s FSA photographs are in the public domain, not requiring copyright
permission for reproduction or publication. Should researches need
further assistance, all copyrighted Russell Lee photographs on the SWT
Wittliff Gallery site include contact information.

WHERE: The Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography is
housed on the top floor of the Alkek Library on the campus of Southwest
Texas State in San Marcos, halfway between Austin and San Antonio.
HOURS: Exhibits open daily: Monday through Friday 8 am to 5 pm (Tuesday
until 9 pm), Saturday 9 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 2 pm to 6 pm.
(Archivist available Monday through Friday as noted above, Saturday 9 to
1). DIRECTIONS & FURTHER INFORMATION: Call 512-245-2313, or visit the
Wittliff Gallery online: www.library.swt.edu/swwc/wg. To speak with Head
Curator Connie Todd, call (512) 245-8361.  ADMISSION: Entrance to
Wittliff Gallery exhibits is always FREE.

* * *

The Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography, in the Alkek
Library at Southwest Texas State University, opened in 1996 as a
creative center and archive devoted to the photographic cultures of
Mexico and the southwestern United States. The Wittliff Gallery brings
together a comprehensive range of work from the region ? including
photographs, serial publications, manuscripts, books, and ephemera ? as
it strives to provide students, faculty, visiting scholars, and the
community at large a dynamic resource that reveals the significance of
photography as a document of social realities and a testimony of
personal visions. The Wittliff proudly houses one of the most
significant collections of contemporary Mexican photography in Texas,
and the largest number of vintage Farm Security Administration prints by
the Great Depression documentarian Russell Lee in the world.

* * *

July 28, 2002
Media Contact: Michele M. Miller
For immediate release
Photographs available
Phone: 512.245.2313
Fax:  512.245.7431
Email:  mm57@swt.edu

###

SWT is a member of the Texas State University System
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, Texas

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