Lewis Hine

Lore & Background

Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1874. After his father's accidental death, he worked various jobs to support his family before enrolling at the University of Chicago in 1900. There he met professor Frank Manny, who later invited Hine to teach at the Ethical Culture School in New York. Hine encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium and studied sociology at Columbia University and New York University. He led his sociology classes to Ellis Island, photographing immigrants, and between 1904 and 1909 took over 200 plates, realizing documentary photography could be a tool for social reform.

In 1907, Hine became staff photographer for the Russell Sage Foundation, photographing Pittsburgh's steel districts for The Pittsburgh Survey. In 1908, he left teaching to work for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), documenting child labor, especially in the Carolina Piedmont. His work was often dangerous; he was threatened with violence and had to assume disguises such as fire inspector or bible salesman to gain entry to mills and mines. During and after World War I, he photographed Red Cross relief in Europe. In the 1920s and 1930s, he made 'work portraits' and in 1930 documented Empire State Building construction from a basket suspended 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue.

Reader's Guide

Hine's photographs for the NCLC directly supported lobbying that led to the creation of the Children's Bureau in 1912 and eventually the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which ended child labor in the United States. His work demonstrated how documentary photography could serve as a catalyst for social change. During the Great Depression, he photographed drought relief for the Red Cross and life in eastern Tennessee for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1936, he was selected as chief photographer for the Works Progress Administration's National Research Project, though his work there was not completed. Despite his earlier impact, Hine struggled professionally in his later years, losing government and corporate patronage. He applied for welfare and died in 1940. After his death, his son donated his prints and negatives to the Photo League. The Museum of Modern Art declined his pictures, but the George Eastman Museum accepted them. His legacy endures through major collections at the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other institutions, and his photographs remain iconic representations of child labor and industrial America.

Did You Know?

• Hine was forced to work as a teenager after his father's accidental death, supporting his widowed mother and sisters.
• To photograph child laborers, Hine often disguised himself as a fire inspector, postcard vendor, bible salesman, or industrial photographer.
• While photographing the construction of the Empire State Building in 1930, Hine was swung out in a specially designed basket 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue.
• In 2006, a historical fiction novel titled Counting on Grace featured Hine's 1910 encounter with a child laborer at a Vermont cotton mill.