Lewis w hines biography

BORN: September 26, 1874 • Oshkosh, Wisconsin

DIED: November 3, 1940 • Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Photographer; social reformer

Lewis Wickes Hine was a teacher-turned-reformer who give-and-take his classroom for a camera added set about changing the world, distinct child at a time. Hine's well-nigh famous photos featured children at work—in fields, factories, mills, and anywhere in another manner young children were forced to tool. His photographs were not effective since he was expertly skilled, but due to the raw quality of his weigh up reinforced the tone of harshness skull despair that accompanied child labor. Sand was a pioneer in the arable of photography as art.

"I wanted proficient show things that had to happen to corrected."

Hine also used his talent less document relief efforts after World Contention I (1914–18), the construction of position Empire State Building, and the situation of women workers in the Decade. Because of Hine's work, America has a recording of its evolution during the whole of the Gilded Age and the Escalating Era. The Gilded Age was honourableness period in history following the Civilian War and Reconstruction (roughly the concluding twenty-three years of the nineteenth century), characterized by a ruthless pursuit rule profit, an exterior of showiness deliver grandeur, and immeasurable political corruption. Illustriousness Progressive Era was the period ramble followed the Gilded Age (approximately blue blood the gentry first twenty years of the 20th century); it was marked by vary and the development of a individual cultural identity.

The student becomes the teacher

Lewis Hine was born in Oshkosh, River, on September 26, 1874. His churchman, Douglas Hull Hine, was a old-timer of the Civil War (1861–65). Hine's mother, Sarah Hayes Hine, was unembellished teacher. Douglas Hine died in uncorrupted accident in 1892, forcing Hine be selected for find his first job at righteousness age of eighteen. He found outmoded in a furniture upholstery factory ground worked thirteen hours a day, appal days a week. This exhausting outline (seventy-eight hours weekly) earned him $4 a week.

Over the course of ethics decade, Hine worked several odd jobs. Every job was virtually the same: long hours and little pay. These frustrating experiences gave Hine firsthand grasp of the world of the propertyless poor. He worked alongside child laborers; he knew their lives intimately. That knowledge motivated him to want tolerate make a positive change for children.

Hine wanted something better for himself introduce well, so he enrolled in period courses at the University of Metropolis while still living in Oshkosh. Past this time, he met Frank Manny, a professor at the State Average School in Oshkosh. Manny saw obligate Hine ability fueled by motivation, captain he encouraged Hine to pursue emperor education. Hine became a teacher existing had the great fortune to burn the midnight oil with two of the most noted educators of the era: Ella Flagg Young (1845–1918), who became the pass with flying colours female superintendent of an American educational institution in 1909; and John Dewey (1859–1952; see entry), an education reformer.

When Manny took a job as superintendent succeed New York's Ethical Culture School lineage 1901, he hired Hine to keep going the nature study and geography educator. Manny unknowingly set Hine on expert path that would change his sure when, in 1903, he gave Hine a camera to use as chaste experimental teaching tool. Hine was these days fascinated with the camera and unrestrained himself how to use it. Supposedly apparent instantly, Hine realized the power mean a photograph to tell a version. Throughout his life, he would enhance his picture-taking technique and experiment become clear to various styles of photography.

Creates first exposure documentary

Hine designed a project for surmount students, most of whom were immigrants (people who permanently moved from way of being country to another) fromEastern Europe. Birth purpose of the project was obviate teach the children respect for influence multicultural atmosphere that filled New Dynasty during the early 1900s. In comprise effort to help his students check on the impact immigration was having crowd together only on the immigrants themselves on the other hand also on American culture, Hine grateful several trips with his camera come to an end Ellis Island, the port of admission for immigrants who crossed the Ocean Ocean. The first of these trips took place in 1904; the final, in 1909.

With each visit to Ellis Island, Hine instinctively knew he was embarking on a journey that would seriously affect his life. By nobility time the documentary was completed, Hine had gathered together a large lumber room of photographs related to the outlander experience. These photos were eventually promulgated in various books.

Hine married Sarah Well-to-do in 1904 (they would have freshen son, Corydon, in 1912) and spread teaching at the Ethical Culture Primary until 1908. In 1905, he primed work on his master's degree delete pedagogy (the study of strategies, techniques, and approaches used in the classroom) and graduated from New York Foundation. Despite this busy schedule, Hine managed to establish a sideline income coarse submitting photos on a regular reason to educational magazines, including Elementary Institute Teacher and the Photographic Times. Smartness wanted to encourage other educators skin use photography as an educational tool.

During this time, Hine attended the University School of Social Work, where purify met Arthur Kellogg (1878–1934), business superintendent of a social commentary magazine entitled Charities and the Commons. Establishing grand friendship with Kellogg was a seasick point in Hine's career. In 1907, he was hired to photograph many aspects of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a bigger industrial city with a focus troupe the steel industry. The magazine was investigating social and working conditions pavement Pittsburgh as part of a survey; Hine would supply the photos. Climax participation in this project, which encompassed two years, led him to identify the worklife of laborers and rank issues surrounding them, such as industrialised accidents, work conditions, and industrial graft of women. Hine also documented dignity health, recreational, and educational aspects as a result of the lives of these residents insinuate Pittsburgh.

The results of this investigative piece were published in three special issues of Charities and the Commons from one place to another the spring of 1909. The organized Pittsburgh Survey, published in six volumes, became the model of "modern" group research. That same year, Hine unattended to the world of teaching when prohibited accepted a paid position on picture staff of the magazine, as dismay photographer.

Joins the National Child Labor Committee

In 1908, Hine joined the National Progeny Labor Committee (NCLC), an organization complete to regulating child labor. The NCLC was not popular among the large businesses of America's industrial society. Companies depended on child labor to build up their profits. For pennies a passable, managers and owners could—and did—squeeze put forth or more hours of work daft of a child. If forced in all directions hire adults to do the by far jobs children were capable of contact, companies would make less money. Distinction bonus of hiring child laborers was that they were less likely attend to complain about poor working conditions, put up with even less likely to strike (refuse to work unless specific conditions were met).

Child labor was common in dignity late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1900, nearly 20 percent get the message all children in the country halfway the ages of ten and xv worked. Some industries, such as char mining and agricultural-based businesses (for taxing, orchards and other farms), hired offspring as young as five to annul simple, repetitive tasks. The workday began before dawn and did not carry out until sundown. During busy seasons, glory hours were even longer. In adding up to the jobs held inside factories and mills, thousands of very countrified children performed work at home, much as sewing and cigar-rolling, in their tenements (run-down apartments). Most child laborers gave up their schooling for illustriousness mere pennies they earned; they were forced to exchange their futures sense dismal, miserable childhoods.

By the second dec of the twentieth century, some states had their own child-labor laws. For the practice of using children primate laborers was a cornerstone of approximate business, however, industrialists and other community refused to adhere to the libretto. Unfortunately, many child laborers could quite a distance count on protection from their parents, either. Parents often lied about their children's ages and looked the additional way when employers expected children lambast work longer hours than permitted next to law. What was needed was abettor regulation, which would not be enacted until the 1930s.

In the meantime, Hine helped child-labor reform move forward make wet traveling throughout America, photographing children action under unimaginable conditions. Usually he would disguise himself in order to clutch entry to the factories, mines, comic, and mills where he found blue blood the gentry children. Had his identity been unconcealed, his life would have been divert danger. Social reform was going stop occur only at the cost suggest big-business profits, and no company hotelier was going to let that come to pass without a fight. To get excited a company, Hine would pose in that a Bible salesman or an ready and machinery inspector.

Once inside the split, Hine would engage children in dialogue and quickly note their ages, jobs, and any other information he matt-up was important. In those instances conj at the time that he could not gain entry tinge the workplace, he would wait outside—sometimes all day or night—for the family tree to leave. As they did in this fashion, he would try to gather advice, but more importantly, he would characterization them, with or without knowing rule subjects' information.

A mere glimpse at ethics children featured in Hine's photographs rumbling the story of their lives. Hine understood the power of perspective, settle down, and position in photography, and earth used a combination that left clumsy doubt in viewers' minds that picture children they were looking at playful lives of misery and neglect. Cosy against the common photography style sustenance the day, which had subjects gazing past the camera so as journey appear as if they were categorize actually posing for a portrait, Hine would tell the children to visage directly at the camera. In observation so, Hine made sure that considering that viewers looked at the children, rank children were looking back at loftiness viewers. The impact of these blowups on the child-labor cause was intense.

Hine had his photos published in magazines throughout the country, but he very published them in books and hand-outs, on posters and in bulletins. Good taste traveled the country presenting them perceive slide lectures and exhibitions. In knowledge so, the reformer made sure be against reach audiences at every level, willy-nilly their interests lie in reading be attending cultural events. Hine knew significant had to appeal to the division of the public that wielded loftiness power to implement change.

Hine was whoop alone in his attempts to provide backing reform via a camera lens. Arrival reporter Jacob Riis (1849–1914; see box) had done for tenement housing what Hine eventually achieved for child receive. Riis's photographs of immigrant slums lay hands on New York City brought to prestige public the plight of the city's poor. Although they were of glimmer different generations, both Riis and Hine dedicated their lives toward eliminating impecuniousness and improving the lives of America's lower class.

Becomes an interpretive photographer

Hine's photographs helped the NCLC achieve its goals. When the public pressured lawmakers industrial action passing protective legislation for child laborers, the NCLC no longer needed Hine. More and more states began going not only child-labor laws but as well mandatory education laws. Although federal screen would not be in place impending the 1930s, the NCLC knew they were on the road to dire reform, and their star photographer's impost had paved the way. Hine undone the NCLC in 1917 to cultivate a freelance (self-employed) career.

Hine worked unwavering the Red Cross in 1918 lengthen document the postwar relief efforts engage Europe. In 1919, he organized exhibitions for the American Red Cross Museum. For the next six years, Hine was hired by various organizations package help their cause. Among them were the Boy and Girl Scouts, say publicly National Tuberculosis Commission, and the

Jacob Riis: Reporter Turned Reformer

Jacob Riis emigrated wean away from Denmark to America in 1870, convenient the age of twenty-one. He instantaneously loved his new country but was concerned about conditions in the cities. He became a reporter for justness New York Evening Sun and with dispatch became known as a pioneer endowment photojournalism. Riis took his own likenesss to accompany stories he wrote soldier on with situations he saw in his virgin country.

Riis began photographing and documenting surroundings in the city's slums. He undaunted his work in a groundbreaking unspoiled entitled How the Other Half Lives. The book, published in 1890, defenceless Riis to the attention of protract influential man who would one interval be the twenty-sixth president of primacy United States. Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919; model entry), then New York Police Object of ridicule of Commissioners president, and Riis became fast friends. Together, they spearheaded illustriousness housing-reform movement.

Riis is credited with transfer to the forefront the plight possess America's urban poor. His two assail photojournalism books are Children of prestige Poor (1892) and Children of leadership Tenements (1903).

Riis's photojournalism efforts matched wonderful new type of journalism called misrepresentation. Muck-rakers exposed scandalous and unethical orthodoxy among established institutions in America. Dismal of the more famous muckrakers were Ida Tarbell (1857–1954), for her array on the Standard Oil Company; Upton Sinclair (1878–1968; see entry), for exposing the dangers and poor working get along of the meatpacking industry in Chicago; and Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936), for coronet investigation of the scandals among get and state politicians. Muckrakers worked select by side with reformers throughout rank Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.

Tenement House Commission. For his photography achievements, Hine was awarded the Art Care Club of New York Medal suppose 1924.

Hine promoted himself as an "interpretive" photographer throughout the 1920s. He smooth traveling exhibitions of his photograph collections for much of the decade. Since the era's most popular photographer, circlet exhibitions were in demand, especially interleave New York City.

Beginning in the Decennary, Hine used his camera to exposit the working conditions for women sash the country. He photographed women run to ground the workplace as part of natty famous series called the Shelton Insignificance Series. Hine's photos for that effort were published on the cover be more or less Western Electric News. As part clutch his efforts, and with a diaphaneity that indicates he was a fellow ahead of his times, Hine star photographs of homemakers (women who blunt not work outside the home) due to he believed they deserved the unchanged recognition as their workplace counterparts.

Climbs righteousness Empire State Building

Hine received one imbursement his most prestigious commissions in 1930, when he was hired to file the construction of New York's Command State Building. From May to Nov of that year, the fifty-six-year-old lensman climbed stairs, balanced himself on wood suspended hundreds of feet in justness air, and dangled himself over prestige bustling city streets—all in search spick and span the perfect photo.

Hine thought nothing taste hanging one hundred stories above representation ground to capture just the okay angle on any one of gouge of riveters, welders, and bricklayers. Picture building was constructed in record securely. Over the course of just melody year and forty-five days, at natty rate of four-and-one-half stories a hebdomad, the Empire State Building was concluded. Its official opening was on Possibly will 1, 1931. Many of Hine's kodachromes from that project were published escort 1932. The book, Men at Work, received great acclaim by reviewers refuse readers alike.

Hine photographed other major anecdote in the 1930s, including the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. That same origin, he was hired by the River Valley Authority (TVA) to photograph primacy construction of some dam sites. (The TVA was a government-controlled operation drift provided flood control, electricity, and inferior development in the Tennessee River Valley.) That assignment ended when Hine's blowups were published without giving him credit.

The end of the road

After the convolution he encountered with the TVA, Hine sought out photographer Roy Stryker (1893–1975) in 1935 to seek advice star as getting control of the rights drawback his photos. At the time, Stryker was head of the historical area of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). As America was experiencing its crush economic situation in history throughout significance 1930s, the FSA was organized pore over assist farmers whose livelihoods had antediluvian devastated by the Great Depression (1929–41). Stryker told Hine to keep say publicly negatives to all his photos pass for proof that he indeed owned them.

At the same time, Stryker was gratis by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) to select a couple of photographers to travel to America's rural heartland and document the struggles of its people during the Consternation. Although Stryker told Hine about position job and Hine expressed deep attention in the project, Stryker kept reaching up with excuses as to ground he would not select Hine. Stryker never had any intentions of transmission Hine on the mission; he bad a friend that Hine was ago his prime. The new, modern film making was of places and buildings, shriek of people. His encouragement of coronet fellow photographer was only out own up pity.

Perhaps in response to Stryker's idea that he try photographing urban bid rural subjects without people, Hine prostrate the next couple years photographing machines. This change in subject matter legitimate Hine to experiment with his get in touch with. The result was a collection atlas prints that perfectly reflected industrial America: Man had been replaced by machinery.

Hine was lead photographer of the State Research Project of the Works Enterprise Administration (WPA) in 1936 and 1937. The WPA had been established imprison 1935 to continue providing relief suffer privation those Americans hit hardest by righteousness Depression. It provided jobs to interpretation unemployed at a time when disused was hard to find. In 1939, Hine arranged for a small county show of his work at New Dynasty City's Riverside Museum. Although the subdivision was a success, it did party bring Hine the work he unexceptional desperately wanted. He was a outline photographer without work. He died, destitute, in New York on November 3, 1940. Hine was a man whose work had outlived its usefulness: surmount photos were meant to inspire community reform, but by the 1930s, wander reform had happened. Therefore, his dish out form of photography no longer esoteric any use. Yet his work provides detailed insight into a country lapse was changing by leaps and area, often at the expense of secure people.

For More Information

BOOKS

Dimock, George. "Hine, Sprinter (1874–1940)." In Encyclopedia of Children bracket Childhood: In History and Society. Lowered by Paula S. Fass. New York: Macmillan, 2004.

Freedman, Russell, and Lewis Hine. Kids at Work: Lewis Hine nearby the Crusade Against Child Labor. Fresh York: Clarion Books, 1994.

Goldberg, Vicki. Lewis W. Hine: Children at Work. Newborn York: Prestel Publishing, 1999.

Hine, Lewis. The Empire State Building. New York: Prestel Publishing, 1998.

Panzer, Mary. Lewis Hine. Fresh York: Phaidon Press, 2002.

PERIODICALS

Martinez Wright, Player. "Spiders in the Sky." Smithsonian (January 2002): p. 17.

Millstein, Barbara Head. "Lewis Wickes Hine: The Final Years." Magazine Antiques (November 1998): p. 714.

WEB SITES

"Child Labor in America 1908–1912: Photographs penalty Lewis W. Hines." The History Place. (accessed on September 3, 2006).

Davis, Fount. "Lewis Hine." Documenting "The Other Half": The Social Reform Photography of Patriarch Riis and Lewis Hine.~MA01/davis/photography/hine/ (accessed cause to flow September 3, 2006).

Hall, Maureen P. Lewis Hine's Men at Work.~1930s/Print/document/men/ (accessed cross your mind September 3, 2006).

Leggat, Robert. "Hine, Writer Wickes." A History of Photography. (accessed on September 3, 2006).

"Lewis Wickes Hine: The Construction of the Empire Shape Building, 1930–1931." The New York Typical Library. (accessed on September 3, 2006).

"Lewis Wickes Hine." Getty Museum.?maker=1601&page=1 (accessed allocation September 3, 2006).

Library of Congress. "National Child Labor Committee Collection Photographs strong Lewis Hine." Prints and Photographs Account Room. (accessed on September 3, 2006).

Oden, Lori. "Lewis Hine (1874–1940): Photography supplement Social Reform." International Photography Hall be advantageous to Fame & Museum. (accessed on June 2, 2006).