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America & Lewis Hine
A compassionate realist in the tradition of Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser, Lewis Hine had the rare gift of being able to transcend the assignments he received as a documentary photographer by investing the most topical subject with lasting human quality.
Seventy years after they were made, his Ellis Island pictures are still intensely the newly arrived immigrants caught in all their bewilderment-- uncertain as to whether they will even be admitted to the promised land.
Hine's dynamic images changed the way Americans looked at social conditions. Hine put his life on the line to capture a truthful picture of people at work. He risked physical attack in order to expose the brutal exploitation of child labor; then, years later, he had himself suspended from the hundredth floor of the Empire State Building to preserve on film the workers who were in the process of erecting it.
Never content merely to depict labor's dehumanizing features, Hine shows us the dignity of work, the workers dominate the instruments of their labor-- the open hearths, mine pits, shovels, tongs and trolleys. Only a consummate camera-artist could have made such pictures, with their poignant qualities of light and shadow, their inescapable all the more remarkable when we consider his cumbersome instrument-- a tripod-mounted 5 x 7 view camera with slides, flash pan, and powder.
How bitterly ironic that this artist and social reformer, after devoting his life to working people, should end up as so many of his subjects did-- on a welfare line. Decades earlier, he had "For many years I have followed the procession of child workers winding through a thousand industrial communities from the canneries of Maine to the fields of Texas. I have heard their tragic stories, watched their cramped lives, and seen their fruitless struggles in the industrial game where the odds are all against them."
Like Walt Whitman before him, Lewis Hine viewed his work and art as grounded in the fluid movements of everyday lives, of history, the present and the future, expressing with vividness and responsiveness the hope for America revived in a sense of great community, and democracy as a life of free and enriching communion.
Seventy years after they were made, his Ellis Island pictures are still intensely the newly arrived immigrants caught in all their bewilderment-- uncertain as to whether they will even be admitted to the promised land.
Hine's dynamic images changed the way Americans looked at social conditions. Hine put his life on the line to capture a truthful picture of people at work. He risked physical attack in order to expose the brutal exploitation of child labor; then, years later, he had himself suspended from the hundredth floor of the Empire State Building to preserve on film the workers who were in the process of erecting it.
Never content merely to depict labor's dehumanizing features, Hine shows us the dignity of work, the workers dominate the instruments of their labor-- the open hearths, mine pits, shovels, tongs and trolleys. Only a consummate camera-artist could have made such pictures, with their poignant qualities of light and shadow, their inescapable all the more remarkable when we consider his cumbersome instrument-- a tripod-mounted 5 x 7 view camera with slides, flash pan, and powder.
How bitterly ironic that this artist and social reformer, after devoting his life to working people, should end up as so many of his subjects did-- on a welfare line. Decades earlier, he had "For many years I have followed the procession of child workers winding through a thousand industrial communities from the canneries of Maine to the fields of Texas. I have heard their tragic stories, watched their cramped lives, and seen their fruitless struggles in the industrial game where the odds are all against them."
Like Walt Whitman before him, Lewis Hine viewed his work and art as grounded in the fluid movements of everyday lives, of history, the present and the future, expressing with vividness and responsiveness the hope for America revived in a sense of great community, and democracy as a life of free and enriching communion.
- GenresPhotographyArt
142 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1997
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About the author
Alan Trachtenberg
62 books16 followersAlan Trachtenberg was Neil Gray, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 29, 2022
Excellent early-20th century social photography; Hine was a craftsman. The Preface and Essay helpfully situate Hine's lackluster career arc but persistent commitment to a credo which loved humanity, but in a specific and active rather than abstract and passive way.
Interesting to note the Chris Arnade's contemporary work bears a lot of similarity to later Hine, moreso than to someone like Jacob Riis--the emphasis is on the dignity and honor and humanity of those on whose hard and body-breaking labor a society of ease depends upon, rather than just the squalid and vicious conditions of many of their lives.
Interesting to note the Chris Arnade's contemporary work bears a lot of similarity to later Hine, moreso than to someone like Jacob Riis--the emphasis is on the dignity and honor and humanity of those on whose hard and body-breaking labor a society of ease depends upon, rather than just the squalid and vicious conditions of many of their lives.
January 23, 2016
This is more "looked at the photos" than "skimmed for info," but I feel bound to admit I didn't read the whole thing due to time constraints. The photos are pretty amazing, though. From what I did read about Mr. Hine - like the creative disguises he used to get into factories so he could expose the working conditions suffered by children - it seems like he was pretty amazing, too.
April 12, 2009
a book with great thoughts about Hine and his works
September 17, 2016
Fantastic book! The photographs were rich with history and truly captured life in the early 1900s. A lot of them were very moving as to the time period. Highly recommend.
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February 20, 2019Not really a review—just a few notes. People pictured are so dirty and literally in rags. Beds are filthy, walls with holes and plastered in newspapers. Many home work situations where the goods were produced in filthy conditions. It’s heartbreaking—obviously poor access to water and washing facilities, just abject destitution and only about 100 years ago in the US.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews