Lewis Hine's child labour photos

Some great stuff from Lewis Hine. His first world war images of the Red cross are interesting too. Usually he gets mentioned along with Jacob Riis

BBC News - Lewis Hine: The child labour photos that shamed America. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17673213.

The History Place - Child Labor in America: Investigative Photos of Lewis Hine. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/.

Riis, Jacob A. 1901. The Making of an American. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bartleby.com/207/11.html.

Pioneering Social Reformer Jacob Riis Revealed "How The Other Half Lives" in America | History | Smithsonian. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...ow-other-half-lives-america-180951546/?no-ist.

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Ed Sutton said:
These pictures illustrate why why captions can be important.

http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/07/child-labor-in-america-100-years-ago/397478/
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Fabulous & important images.

I've long struggled with titles and captions and had come to the same conclusion as HC-B, namely that photos shouldn't need them. I often find myself reading them rather than pondering the images. Does this set challenge that? Maybe. In this case there is some useful extra information but I think that a fuller article would be better than the lengthy captions that are presented.
 
In the case of this article, I think the writer has (wrongly) assumed that people know about Hine, using photography for social purposes. (hence the links I added)
It's often said that Hine created the foundations for the social documentary photographic tradition in America, although Riis with How the other half lives in the 1890's would have had a big influence at the time.

It's an interesting subject. Obviously for the British side, you've Bill Brandt, Chris Killip, the Exit Group. I read Nick Danzigers books, with one where he travelled around Britains deprived areas. There's so many when you start reading into this genre.
 
stumeech said:
They are really good shots, enjoyed them all. Wonder if he knew how important they'd be 100+ years later?
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He wasn't really concerned about that, he was only thinking about highlighting the child labour issues at that immediate time.
 
Great link, thanks for posting.
Got to say there are some harrowing faces amongst them ... what do they say, "Kids today don't know they are born"?
 
If you go the the website: http://www.lewishinephotographs.com/ there's over 5000 photographs, taken when he was working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). All 16 years work is there.

Basically the NCLC had been trying to put a stop to child labor since it was founded in 1904, but statistics weren’t having the effect they had hoped. So, in 1908, they emp[loyed Lewis Hine to take photographs to assist with their message. He spent 16 years travelling the country takign images, often having to disguise his intentions.

Nattily dressed in a suit, tie, and hat, Hine the gentleman actor and mimic assumed a variety of personas — including Bible salesman, postcard salesman, and industrial photographer making a record of factory machinery — to gain entrance to the workplace.


When unable to deflect his confrontations with management, he simply waited outside the canneries, mines, factories, farms, and sweatshops with his fifty pounds of photographic equipment and photographed children as they entered and exited the workplace.

It was these photos, along with the detailed captions, that the NCLC distributed to try and educate and convince the public that child labour should be illegal. They would put the photos in newspapers, progressive publications, circulars and slide shows. The captions as they are recorded are those that go with the images.
 
Oh and the sad irony is that Hine died in poverty.


"There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work."

-- Lewis Hine, 1908
 
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