Lewis Wickes Hine

In 1874, Lewis Wickes Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He put himself through the University of Chicago, New York University and Columbia University. He became a Sociology major and began to teach in New York. Lewis worked at Ethical Culture School where he taught his students to use photography as a tool for learning. Hine would bring his students to Ellis Island where they would photograph immigrants coming to America. Hine began to realize the impact these photos could give in social change.


The Pittsburgh Survey was a sociological study started by the Russell Sage Foundation. They hired Hine in 1906 to photograph steel-making districts and their every day lives. in 1908 he left his teaching position at Ethical Culture School to work for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).  Hine focused on child labor mainly in the Carolina Piedmont. He later used Galton's composite portraits to capture cotton mill child labor in 1913.



Lewis wanted to impact society with his photography and make a difference. These children were losing their youth. No education. Little to no pay. Children were working long hours in extreme temperatures, in factories and buildings with dangerous health risks.




Hine's early work shows these faces of children who should be happy, should be in school, should still have innocence. But instead they had to grow up as soon as they could walk and talk. Hine's photography was odd because of his placement of children. Usually looked staged and like he placed them in certain positions. Other times he photographed the children in their workplace doing their job but again had them hold still to get his shot.




Later on when Hine began to understand and delve deeper into his artistic abilities he started photographing for other companies and groups. One of his more famous collections was his photographs of the Empire State Building being designed and constructed. It depicts men laying, standing and sitting on these platforms that were well overtop the city.

The background of these photographs looks almost unreal. They seem photoshopped or painted in later on. But these photographs of these workers shows no fear or worry in their faces. 

Because of the time these photos were taken, camera technology was not that advanced. The quality of these photographs is not the best but it's the story they tell that impacts the viewer. The quality of Hine's photographs fits well with the industrial, labor induced age in which he took them. It gives them a hardier feel as if black and white photography showed all the darkness and sadness of these times hidden inside each and every little crevice.

Overall I love Lewis Hine's earlier work the most because of it's straight forward impact on society and blatant truth about child labor. He wanted to capture big changes in America and successfully grasped this tragic era's problems. Hine gave these child workers the ability to tell their own story with the way they presented themselves in each photograph he took.  

cites:


http://images.dailykos.com/images/68057/large/lewis-hine-child-labor-a-heavy-load-1909.jpg?1391618508
https://kyriolexy.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/hine2.jpg
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17673213