Signs in front of highway tavern. Crystal City, Texas

Russell Lee
$85.00
Size

Add Custom Frame

Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details

Add Custom Frame

Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details

Add Custom Frame

Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details

Add Custom Frame

Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details

Add Custom Frame

Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details

Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details
Artist Statement

Shot in 1939, Signs displays Lee’s signature “straight” photography style, emphasizing camera technology and the ability to capture an image with unparalleled and unmanipulated clarity and richness—a snapshot of a moment in life. Taken head on, Signs depicts a rush of roadside advertising in the heyday of American highways. From gassing up to guzzling down, this tavern’s got you covered from top to bottom.

Why We Love It

Located in Crystal City, Texas, Signs focuses on an ad-packed pitstop just off US Route 83, a straight shot highway that bisects the country right down the middle. Extending almost 2,000 miles from the Canadian border in North Dakota to the Mexican border in Texas, you can bet your bottom dollar you’d be due for a Dr. Pepper right around there.

Details

+ Limited-edition, exclusive to 20x200
+ Museum quality: archival inks, 100% cotton rag paper unless noted
+ Handcrafted custom-framing is available

Our quoted dimensions are for the size of paper containing the images, not the printed image itself. We do not alter the aspect ratio, nor do we crop or resize the artists’ originals. All of our prints have a minimum border of .5 inches and maximum of 2.5” to allow for framing.

Medium

Innova Exhibition Photo Baryta IFA 69

8"x10" | edition of 10
11"x14" | edition of 150
16"x20" | edition of 25
20"x24" | edition of 10
30"x40" | edition of 5
40"x50" | edition of 2
Artist - Russell Lee

Russell Lee

Russell Lee was an American photographer, widely considered the most prolific staff photographer of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). He focused on communities in his photography, telling the stories of different towns through various series of images.

Lee worked as a chemical engineer before he met his first wife, a painter. Her involvement in the arts sparked his and eventually he began working as a photographer full-time. A year after he bought his first camera, he joined the FSA. During his tenure with the agency, he produced more than 5,000 images. The director, Roy Stryker, described Lee as a "taxonomist": he used his camera to carefully document every element of the scenes he encountered. Because of this, his images were more understated than his colleagues Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, but when put together, his series of images told powerful stories.

After the Great Depression, Lee and his second wife, Jean Smith, began photographing the removal and confinement of Japanese-American citizens. Lee was deeply troubled by what he saw and believed in the importance of documenting the atrocity. For months, he captured the living and working conditions of the labor camps, resulting in the largest collection of images documenting this aspect of the Japanese American wartime experience. 

Lee left the FSA in the early 1940s, photographing for Air Transport Command and later the Department of the Interior. He later became a professor of photography at the University of Texas–Austin before his death in 1986.