Sunflower Plantation Photos
1939 January - Russell Lee
One and one-half years after Lange, Lee did the same for the Pace and Merigold areas: he took pictures of the FSA recruitment process, the sharecropper families being interviewed and their homes. Lee did visit the “Plantation” itself once and while there snapped four photos of the barns, the gin and “The Store."
First up are the four photos he took of the Sunflower Plantation headquarters. After that, those he took on the rounds with the recruiter. He even caught the recruiter himself in one shot.
(If anyone can identify any of these people, please let us know. We'd really like to be able to put some names with these photos. Thanks.)
First up are the four photos he took of the Sunflower Plantation headquarters. After that, those he took on the rounds with the recruiter. He even caught the recruiter himself in one shot.
(If anyone can identify any of these people, please let us know. We'd really like to be able to put some names with these photos. Thanks.)
General store. Sunflower Plantation, near Merigold, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee
A high resolution version of this image is available.
A high resolution version of "The Store" image above is available. Click here.
Cotton gin and warehouse. Sunflower Plantation, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee
Barn. Sunflower Plantation near Merigold, Mississippi. This farm is leased by FSA (Farm Security Administration) and subleased to clients (1939 Jan) Lee
Mule shed. Sunflower Plantation. This farm is leased by FSA and subleased to clients. near Merigold, MS (1939 Jan) Lee
Clothing store, Merigold, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee
Clothing store, Merigold, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee (2)
Now for some photos of the recruiting visits. Looks like three families. If you think you know who any of these people are, please let us know.
Tenant farmer and family sitting in front of fireplace of old home. They will be FSA (Farm Security Administration) clients on Sunflower Plantation, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee
House of sharecroppers near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
House of sharecropper near Merigold, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Home of share-cropper living near Merigold, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Goods piled in corner of living room of sharecropper near Merigold, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Corner of kitchen of tenant farmer living in Merigold, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Son of sharecropper washing face. Near Pace, Mississippi. Background, Sunflower Plantation, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee
Son of tenant farmer washing hands. Near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Son of tenant farmer in corner of living room. Pace, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
For a really good look at this boy with his stopper gun (above), explore here.
Corner of kitchen with flower bulbs in tin pans. Tenant farm family living near Pace, Mississippi (1939 Jan) Lee
Wife of sharecropper putting baby to sleep near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Barn of sharecropper near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee (2)
Barn of sharecroppers near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) lee
Hen nests at sharecropper's cabin near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Lack of storage space necessitates keeping agricultural implements in the open. Sharecropper farm near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Second family being recruited for Sunflower Plantation Project begins here.
Tenant farmer and family near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Tenant farmer being interviewed by FSA (Farm Security Administration) Family Section agent, near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Wife of tenant farmer cleaning kitchen near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Wife of tenant farmer cutting piece of ham in smokehouse near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Quilting in sharecropper's home near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Quilting in sharecropper's home near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee (2)
Pace (vicinity), Mississippi, in the Delta area. The corner of a tenant farm living room and bedroom. This family was moved to Sunflower plantation, a FSA project (1939 Jan) Lee
In the above image, see mom and dad in the mirror?
Decorations above mantelpiece in farm home near Merigold, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Barn of sharecropper near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Barn of sharecropper near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee (3)
Barn of sharecropper near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Side of sharecropper's cabin near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Now for the third family. Either they are sharing the house with the previous family, they have identical rugs or this couple was visiting the previous family when this photo was taken. The ladies look like sisters - check out the "quilting" photos above.
Tenant farm family living near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Kitchen table, farm family near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo, Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Back door sharecropper's house, Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Shed on sharecropper's farm near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Side of sharecropper's cabin near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
Back door of sharecropper's house, Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation. (1939 Jan) Lee
Privy of sharecropper's farmstead near Pace, Mississippi. Background photo for Sunflower Plantation (1939 Jan) Lee
This is a much more recent photo showing Pace, MS. Pace never was much but has really fallen on bad times since yesteryear's heyday of labor-intensive cotton farming.
Russell Lee, FSA (Farm Security Administration) photographer
Russell Lee
Russell Lee was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration. His technically excellent images documented the ethnography of various American classes and cultures. (For a graphic survey, see here.)
Born: July 21, 1903, Ottawa, IL
Died: August 28, 1986, Austin, TX
Period: Social realism
Books: Russell Lee Photographs, Far from Main Street, Russell Lee, Photographer
Education: Lehigh University
Lee grew up in Ottawa, Illinois and went to the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana for high school. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
He gave up an excellent career as a chemical engineer to become a painter. Originally he used photography as a precursor to his painting, but soon became interested in photography for its own sake, recording the people and places around him. Among his earliest subjects were Pennsylvanian bootleg mining and the Father Divine cult.
By the fall of 1936 during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans. Stryker provided direction and bureaucratic protection to the group, leaving the photographers free to compile what has been described as "the greatest documentary collection which has ever been assembled." Lee created some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940. Over the spring and summer of 1942, Lee was one of several government photographers to document the eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, producing over 600 images of families waiting to be removed and their later life in various detention facilities.
After the FSA was defunded in 1943, Lee served in the Air Transport Command (ATC), during which he took photographs of all the airfield approaches used by the ATC to supply the Armed Forces in World War II. He worked for the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) in 1946 and 1947, helping the agency compile a medical survey in the communities involved in mining bituminous coal. He created over 4,000 photographs of miners and their working conditions in coal mines. In 1946, Lee completed a series of photos focused on a Pentecostal Church of God in a Kentucky coal camp.
While completing the DOI work, Lee also continued to work under Stryker, producing public relations photographs for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Some 80,000 of those photographs have been donated by Exxon Corporation to the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
In 1947 Lee moved to Austin, Texas and continued photography. In 1965 he became the first instructor of photography at the University of Texas. Although he was still somewhat photographically active after 1965, Lee's students, not his own work, became his focus until his retirement in 1973.
In addition to the materials at the University of Louisville, other important collections of Lee's work are held by the New Mexico Museum of Art, Wittliff collections, Texas State University and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Russell Lee was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration. His technically excellent images documented the ethnography of various American classes and cultures. (For a graphic survey, see here.)
Born: July 21, 1903, Ottawa, IL
Died: August 28, 1986, Austin, TX
Period: Social realism
Books: Russell Lee Photographs, Far from Main Street, Russell Lee, Photographer
Education: Lehigh University
Lee grew up in Ottawa, Illinois and went to the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana for high school. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
He gave up an excellent career as a chemical engineer to become a painter. Originally he used photography as a precursor to his painting, but soon became interested in photography for its own sake, recording the people and places around him. Among his earliest subjects were Pennsylvanian bootleg mining and the Father Divine cult.
By the fall of 1936 during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans. Stryker provided direction and bureaucratic protection to the group, leaving the photographers free to compile what has been described as "the greatest documentary collection which has ever been assembled." Lee created some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940. Over the spring and summer of 1942, Lee was one of several government photographers to document the eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, producing over 600 images of families waiting to be removed and their later life in various detention facilities.
After the FSA was defunded in 1943, Lee served in the Air Transport Command (ATC), during which he took photographs of all the airfield approaches used by the ATC to supply the Armed Forces in World War II. He worked for the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) in 1946 and 1947, helping the agency compile a medical survey in the communities involved in mining bituminous coal. He created over 4,000 photographs of miners and their working conditions in coal mines. In 1946, Lee completed a series of photos focused on a Pentecostal Church of God in a Kentucky coal camp.
While completing the DOI work, Lee also continued to work under Stryker, producing public relations photographs for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Some 80,000 of those photographs have been donated by Exxon Corporation to the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
In 1947 Lee moved to Austin, Texas and continued photography. In 1965 he became the first instructor of photography at the University of Texas. Although he was still somewhat photographically active after 1965, Lee's students, not his own work, became his focus until his retirement in 1973.
In addition to the materials at the University of Louisville, other important collections of Lee's work are held by the New Mexico Museum of Art, Wittliff collections, Texas State University and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
