Russell Werner Lee was born in Ottawa, Illinois on July 21, 1903 to Burton Lee and Adeline Werner. Lee was able to attend school and graduated from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. While he started as a chemist, Lee was interested in painting. He often used photography as a precursor to his work but became more interested in the photography aspect as time went on. Lee's early subjects included Pennsylvanian bootleg mining and the Father Divine cult. Lee was hired in 1936 by the Farm Security Administration photographic documentation project. His most well known photos were taken during this period. He worked alongside other American photographer such as Roy Stryker, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and Walker Evans. Lee was one of the government photographers who documented the forced relocation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast in the spring and summer of 1942. Lee went on to photograph for the Air Transport Command during World War II, the United States Department of the Interior, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. Lee moved to Austin, Texas in 1947. In 1965, he became the first instructor of photography at the University of Texas. Russell Lee died on August 28, 1986.