SOCIAL REFORM FROM THE CAMERA'S LENS

We have all seen examples of his work.  Maybe it was the photo of iron workers sitting on a beam suspended precariously high above city streets in the early twentieth century or a photo of an adolescent laboring in a factory or mill in the early 1900's.  The images he captured helped to reform the consciousness and labor policy of a nation.

Lewis Wickes Hine was born September 26, 1874 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  He worked to save money for a college education after his Father passed away in an accident early in his life.  A Sociology major at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and New York University led to a stint as a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture School.  He incorporated photography as an instructional medium, taking his class to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day.

It was during his early thirties that Hine came to realize his true calling of photojournalism.  From 1904 through 1909 he had amassed over 200 plates (photographs), many as a commissioned photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) starting in 1907.  Hine documented American industries use of child labor in an effort to aide the NCLC's lobbying to end the cruel practice.  Also during this time he freelanced for The Survey, a top nationwide social reform magazine, which published his photos exposing wide spread child labor conditions.

Adding to his growing resume, in 1908, Hine signed on to an influential sociological study called The Pittsburgh Survey to photograph people and life in the steel-making districts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During and after World War I, he photographed American Red Cross relief work in Europe. 

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Hine made a series of "work portraits," which explored the human contribution to modern industry. Commissioned to document the construction of The Empire State Building in 1930. Hine photographed the workers perched high above the city, in precarious positions securing iron and steel to framework of the structure.  Hine was swung out in a specially designed basket 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue.  As the Nation entered the Great Depression, both the Red Cross and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) enlisted his photographic skills to document drought relief in the American South and life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee respectively.  

Much in demand, Hine 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. 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.

Unfortunately, during the last years of his life interest in his work both past and present, waned and professionally and financially he struggled with the loss of government and corporate patronage, leaving him at the same level of poverty as that which he had recorded in his early pictures.  He died at age 66 on November 3, 1940 at Dobbs Ferry Hospital in New York, after an operation.

His photographs can be seen at The Library of Congress, the George Eastman House, and  the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.