AI Model: Claude by Anthropic
Sources:
View on Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives →
AI-generated content may contain errors. Community members are encouraged to verify important details independently.
In 1937 the photographer Russell Lee worked through Littlefork, in Koochiching County, for the Farm Security Administration. His negatives from the town carry three different months on their captions: May, June and September. The Library of Congress holds every frame and supplies the caption for each one; this set gathers ten of them, moving from the telephone exchange and main street to the lumber work and farms around town.
The earliest picture here is dated June 1937. The Library’s caption reads simply “Telephone operators. Littlefork, Minnesota,” and names no one. The frame is filed in Lot 1141, the shelflist of fifty-four prints the Library assembled from Koochiching County’s lumber towns that year.
Two operators sit at the board; the caption gives no more than that. It does not say how many lines the exchange carried or who staffed it beyond the hour Lee’s camera was there, and this piece has no source for anything past what the caption states.
By September, Lee had turned his camera to lodging. The caption for the next frame is direct: “Boarding house at Littlefork, Minnesota, used mostly by lumberjacks.” It is the only one of the ten frames that names a trade, and it names it only in passing, as the caption’s own description of who stayed there.
Like the switchboard picture, this one belongs to Lot 1141. Three months separate the two frames, June to September, and nothing in the captions ties them together beyond the shelflist and the town.
September 1937 produced several street-level views, all filed in Lot 1141. The caption for one reads only “Bandstand. Littlefork, Minnesota,” with nothing said of when it was used or by whom.
Another September frame, captioned “Buckboard. Littlefork, Minnesota,” shows the horse-drawn vehicle without further comment from the Library. No driver is named, no destination given.
A third frame from the same month is captioned “Detail of church in Littlefork, Minnesota.” The word “detail” is the Library’s own, suggesting Lee framed some particular part of the building rather than the whole of it, though the caption does not say which part or name the church.
Two frames in this set document lumber work directly, and they come from different months and different shelflist lots. The first, from June 1937 and filed in Lot 1141, carries the caption “Loading railroad ties. Littlefork, Minnesota.”
The men and the ties are described in exactly those terms and no others. The caption gives no count of ties, no destination for them, no name for the rail line they were meant for.
The second labor photograph is dated May 1937, the earliest month in this set, and it is filed in Lot 1143, the Library’s much larger shelflist of logging-camp operations that lot’s own record locates near Effie. The caption on this particular frame, though, places the scene differently: “Lumberjack using peaveys to remove logs from banks of Little Fork River. Near Littlefork, Minnesota.”
The caption names the tool, the river and the town; it does not name the man. Because this frame sits in a lot the Library built around camps elsewhere, its filing and its caption point in two different directions, and this piece follows the caption’s own words rather than the lot’s broader description.
The last three frames turn from the town to the land around it, all dated September 1937. One, filed in Lot 1139, is captioned “Large dairy barn under construction near Littlefork, Minnesota. The outside is covered with galvanized steel.”
The caption’s detail about galvanized steel siding is the most specific technical note in the whole set, and it is the Library’s own observation, not an inference drawn here.
A second farm frame, filed in Lot 1140, the Library’s shelflist for a comprehensive story on the region’s cut-over land, carries the caption “Cut-over farm house near Littlefork, Minnesota.” The term “cut-over” is the Library’s word for land logged and then cleared for farming, and the caption uses it without further explanation.
The last frame returns to Lot 1139 and to a harvest scene. Its caption is the longest of the ten: “Man in charge of the threshing waving to crew in the field to bring in another load. Near Littlefork, Minnesota.” The man is described by his role in the caption, waving in a load, but he is not named.
These ten frames, spread across May, June and September of 1937, are what the Library’s own catalogue preserves of Lee’s work in and around Littlefork. For what the town holds today, the guide’s Littlefork page has that information. Here, the record stops where Lee’s camera and the Library’s captions leave it, in 1937.
1937: Russell Lee in the Lumber Towns works through the Library of Congress’s 1937 survey of this county’s lumber towns one town at a time. The photographs are in the public domain; the captions are the Library’s; the article adds nothing the captions do not carry.
Every photograph above was made in 1937 by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration and is held by the Library of Congress. The Library states: “The contents of the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives are in the public domain and are free to use and reuse.” Each item record carries the advisory “No known restrictions”, and the caption under each picture is the Library’s own, reproduced word for word.
Credit line supplied by the Library: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.
The frames in this instalment come from:
Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives at the Library of Congress · the Library’s rights statement for this collection
