Lewis Hine

For more information on Lewis Wickes Hine, visit Britannica.com.

(b Oshkosh, WI, 26 Sept 1874; d Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 4 Nov 1940). American photographer. Following several years as a factory worker in Oshkosh, and a short period at the University of Chicago, where he studied sociology and pedagogy (1900-01), he went to New York to teach at the Ethical Culture School (1901-8). There he acquired a camera as a teaching tool and soon set up a club and ran classes at the school, while improving his own skills as a self-taught photographer. In 1904 Hine's interest in social issues led him to document newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island as a way of demonstrating their common humanity, for example Young Russian Jewess at Ellis Island (1905; see Rosenblum, Rosenblum and Trachtenberg, p. 43). Thereafter he sought to demonstrate the efficacy of the photograph as a truthful witness, accepting commissions from social-work agencies. Towards the end of the first decade he became official photographer on the Pittsburgh Survey, a seminal investigation of America's archetypal industrial city, producing such images as Tenement House and Yard (1907-8; Rosenblum, Rosenblum and Trachtenberg, p. 56).

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Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874-1940), American sociologist and documentary photographer, born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he studied at the State Normal School, completed courses in drawing and sculpture, and worked in a factory before studying sociology at Chicago University in 1900. A self-taught photographer, he moved to New York in 1901, becoming an instructor in nature studies and official photographer to the Ethical Culture School. In 1905, informed by his training in sociology, and with his reformist interests sharpened by his experiences at the school, he began using the camera to study social problems by recording the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island. These images led the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) to hire him in 1906 for its campaign to ban child labour in agriculture, the canning and textile industries, mining, and other places progressive reformers regarded as unsafe or morally unfit for children. While working for the NCLC, he completed his master's degree in sociology at Columbia University (1907). He first published his photographs with accompanying text as an essay in Charities and Commons, later better known as Survey magazine, in whose pages his passionate opposition to child labour appeared regularly. Between 1908 and 1918 the NCLC sent Hine throughout the eastern states to document the prevalence of the problem. Using flash photography techniques pioneered by Jacob Riis, he documented young boys working underground in coal mines in Pennsylvania. Plant managers at southern textile mills tried to exclude him from their premises. Always he accompanied his images, intended for use in posters, pamphlets, lantern lectures, and other NCLC campaign media, with detailed captions describing working conditions, the ages of the children, and, if possible, their wages. Hine also did occasional photographic work for the American Red Cross between 1910 and 1914, and between 1918 and 1920 documented post-war conditions in the Balkans, Italy, and Greece, images which became part of The Human Cost of War (1920).

Hine began to receive recognition as a photographer rather than simply as a reformer in 1919, when his first one-man show was mounted. He continued to work as a photographer and photo director for Survey 1922-9, and for the Red Cross. Notwithstanding his standing as a reformer and photographer, his experience photographing construction of the Empire State Building, New York (1931), and the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority (1933) and Rural Electrification Administration (1934-5), Roy Stryker did not hire him for the FSA's monumental documentary photographic effort. Instead Hine became photographic director of the National Research Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Though equally fine, these images are much less widely known than his pioneering child labour photographs.

— Constance B. Schulz

Bibliography

• Gutman, J. M., Lewis W. Hine and the American Social Conscience (1967).
• Gutman, J. M., Lewis W. Hine, 1874-1940 (1974).
• America & Lewis Hine: Photographs 1904-1940, text by A. Trachtenberg (1977)

"Power house mechanic working on steam pump," 1920

Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States. ^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Photojournalism 3 Later life of Lewis Hine 4 Notable photographs 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Early life

Lewis W. Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1874. After his father died in an accident, he began working and saved his money for a college education. Hine studied sociology at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and New York University. He became a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture School, where he encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium.^[2] The classes traveled to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day. Between 1904 and 1909, Hine took over 200 plates (photographs), and eventually came to the realization that his vocation was photojournalism.^[3]

Photojournalism

Baseball team composed mostly of child laborers from a glassmaking factory. Indiana, August 1908.

In 1907, he became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Over the next decade, Hine documented child labor in American industry to aid the NCLC's lobbying efforts to end the practice. Between 1906 and 1908, he was a freelance photographer for The Survey, a leading social reform magazine. He took all these pictures to show the country the cruelties of child labor.

Child laborers in glassworks. Indiana, 1908

In 1908, Hine photographed life in the steel-making districts and people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the influential sociological study called The Pittsburgh Survey. During and after World War I, he documented American Red Cross relief work in Europe. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Hine made a series of "work portraits," which emphasized the human contribution to modern industry. In 1930, Hine was commissioned to document the construction of The Empire State Building. Hine photographed the workers in precarious positions while they secured the iron and steel framework of the structure, taking many of the same risks the workers endured. In order to obtain the best vantage points, Hine was swung out in a specially designed basket 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue.^[4]

"Addie Card, 12 years. Spinner in North Pormal [i.e., Pownal] Cotton Mill. Vt."^[5]

During the Great Depression, he again worked for the Red Cross, photographing drought relief in the American South, and for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), documenting life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. He also served as chief photographer for the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) National Research Project, which studied changes in industry and their effect on employment. Hine was also a member of the faculty of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School.

The Library of Congress holds more than five thousand Hine photographs, including examples of his child labor and Red Cross photographs, his work portraits, and his WPA and TVA images. Other large institutional collections include nearly ten thousand of Hine's photographs and negatives held at the George Eastman House and almost five thousand NCLC photographs at the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Later life of Lewis Hine

In 1936, Hine was selected as the photographer for the National Research Project of the Works Projects Administration, but his work there was never completed.

The last years of his life were filled with professional struggles due to loss of government and corporate patronage. Nobody was interested in his work, past or present, and Lewis Hine was consigned to the same level of poverty as he had earlier recorded in his pictures. He died at age 66 on November 3, 1940 at Dobbs Ferry Hospital in Dobbs Ferry, New York, after an operation.^[6]

Notable photographs

• Child Labor: Girls in Factory (1908)
• Steam Fitter (1920)
• Workers, Empire State Building (1931)

See also

• Further works about Hine (from WorldCat)
• Further works about Hine (from WorldCat), online material only
• Further works by Hine (from WorldCat)
• Further works by Hine (from WorldCat), online material only
• House Calls, a documentary about physician and photographer Mark Nowaczynski, who was inspired by Hine to photograph elderly patients.^[7]

References

1. ^ The Lewis Hine Projectretrieved October 15, 2009
2. ^ Smith-Shank, Deborah L. (March 2003). "Lewis Hine and His Photo Stories: Visual Culture and Social Reform". Art Education 56 (2): 33–37. OCLC 96917501. ISSN 0004-3125. 
3. ^ Troncale, Anthony T. "About Lewis Wickes Hine". New York Public Library. http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/hinex/empire/biography.html. Retrieved 2007-05-22. 
4. ^ Troncale, Anthony T. "Facts about the Empire State Building". New York Public Library. http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/hinex/empire/about.html. Retrieved 2007-05-22. 
5. ^ ADDIE CARD: Search For An Amemic Little Spinner, Chapter One retrieved October 15, 2009
6. ^ The New York Times; November 4, 1940; "Lewis W. Hine; Photographer Whose Pictures Showed Conditions in Factories" p. 19
7. ^ Brett-MacLean, Pamela (2007-05-27). "The elderly patient: in situ". CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association). http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/176/11/1617. Retrieved 2009-04-07. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lewis Hine

• Photo of Lewis Hine
• Library of Congress NCLC Prints & Photographs
• Lewis Hine Collection at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (5000 photos)
• Dozens of high-resolution Hine photos with the original captions
• Lewis Hine Project: Nationally known project to locate and interview descendants of child laborers photographed by Hine
• Lewis Hine : Immigration & The Progressive Era
• Youtube Video: "United States Child Labor, 1908-1920: As Seen Through the Lens of Sociologist and Photographer Lewis W. Hine"
• Lewis Hine, Selected Prints

Persondata
NAME	Hine, Lewis Wickes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH	September 26, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oshkosh, Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH	November 3, 1940
PLACE OF DEATH	Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

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