American Tenants by Russell Lee, 1937 Aircraft the American Dream

the American Dream

'[I]t occurred to me that if I could get Mark Twain to pose

a lexicographer

unloading an M4 Sherman tank of the 66th Armoured Regiment

29th Division recalled

American Tenants by Russell Lee, 1937 Aircraft the American DreamABOUT THIS PHOTOGRAPH I cannot help but think Russell Lee either shot the Landers at an opportune moment, or simply staged the tenant farmers to resemble Grant Wood's seminal painting American Gothic, painted less than a decade earlier though separated by half a day by car, Wood's location of the iconic couple is only a state away in Iowa. In Lee's close photograph of the Landers', husband and wife wear a contemporaneous version of farmers' clothing,