Among the most influential artist-activists in photographic history, Lewis Hine deployed the camera as an instrument of social change. Commissioned by social welfare agencies, he traveled the country to record the harsh conditions under which immigrants and children lived and labored. From 1908 to 1913, he worked as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, documenting children working in mills, factories, canneries, mines, and agricultural fields across America.
Hine coined the term “photo-story,” precursor of the photo-essay, to describe his work as an investigative photographer, in which he combined image and text. A keen observer, he captioned his images with detailed information about the subject’s context. “The average person believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify,” Hine explained. “Of course, you and I know that this unbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken, for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.”
This image of a young, well-kept boy is classic Hine in its distinctive frontal, factual depiction combined with his aesthetic choice of the oblique angle to capture the extended shop counter (including the “Hot ✟ Buns” sign). Missing is the accompanying text in which he notes the boy’s age (eleven), his pre-dawn start time, and his twelve-hour workday seven days a week. Hine’s photographic crusade against child labor was not limited to large industrial facilities. In mom-and-pop businesses such as this one, first-wave immigrants relied on the cheap and plentiful labor provided by the next generation.
Eve Schillo
2024
Bibliography
Cerku, Ashley. “Applied Visual Anthropology in the Progressive Era: The Influence of Lewis Hine’s Child Labor Photographs.” Visual Anthropology 32, nos. 3–4 (2019): 221–39.
Nemerov, Alexander. Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine, 185–90. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Steinorth, Karl, Marianne Fulton, Anthony Bannon, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, and International Photo- and Cine Exhibition. Lewis Hine: Passionate Journey, Photographs 1905−1937. Zurich: Edition Stemmle, 1996.
