The Legacy of Lewis Hine and the Origins of Advocacy PhotographyFrom teacher & Social Worker to Photographic Artist

1874 – Born, Oshkosh WIParents: Douglas Hull Hine and Sarah Haynes

Hine

1892 – Graduates from Oshkosh High SchoolFather dies of accidental gun shot wound.

Works as:Laborer – upholstery factoryCasual laborer – firewood salesDelivery ClerkDoor-to-door salesmanJanitor, Collection AgentNight School: Stenographer & BookkeepingBookkeeperBank Clerk Teacher – Normal SchoolDiscovers he was: “neither physically nor temperamentally fitted for any of these jobs.”

1899 - Oshkosh Normal School / with Frank Manny

1900- University of Chicago with John Dewey

1901 – Ethical Cultural School – Frank Manny Director Hine - Instructor

1905 - Columbia University/ New York University

Professor Frank Manny – a mentor for a lifetime

1904 Marries Sarah Ann RichIn Oshkosh

Attends: Columbia School of Social Work

Meets Arthur Kellogg, editor of Charities and Commons and other progressive leaders

1912Corydon Wickes Hine is born

1903 – From camera club to Ellis Island Immigrants

1908 - Photography full time

1911 – National Child Labor Committee NCLC

Ellis Island Assignment:

Photograph immigrants arriving at Ellis Island so that the students “may have the same regard for contemporary immigrants as the have for the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock.”

Frank A. Manny

Lewis Hine Photographing in Paris

1918-19 –World War I

American Red Cross

1930-31 Empire State Building

1932 – “Men at Work” Published

1930’S – Depression era documentation & limited commissions.

1938 - Child Labor Reforms – Fair Labor Standards Act

1938 – Showing of work as art

1940 – Died, Dobbs Ferry, New York

Oshkosh Public MuseumOshkosh Northwestern

Hineography“A style of witnessing social problems as a means of social uplift with consummate technical and artistic skill and unquestionable compassion for his subjects.”

HineographyThis style influenced documentary photography for decades, if Jacob Riis’s photographic style distanced the viewer form his working-class subjects, projecting fear inspiring images, Hine often drew the viewer to his subjects. He framed his targets from a middle distance a strategy dictated both by the technical limitations of his camera and his own straightforward manner.

Hine combined the ethnographic portrait and the commission studio portrait into a new variant, devising a “model for representing the Other that was esthetically and politically unprecedented.”

Hine transformed the ethnographic portrait by treating the ‘socially Inferior’ worker with the respect usually accorded the subject of a commissioned portrait.”

Jacob Riis 1849-1914

“In my early days of my child-labor activities I was an investigator with a camera attachment ... but the emphasis became reversed until the camera stole the whole show.”

1935

“There are two things I wanted to do. I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.”

“If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera''.

“ While photographers may not lie, liars may photograph ''

“In the last analysis, good photography is a question of art”

Street Scene New York City 1910

Ellis Island Immigrants

Albanian Woman with Folded Cloth, Ellis Island 1905

Italian Family of Ferry Boat leaving Ellis Island 1905

Black Family by Fireplace, 1920

Under Privileged Child at Hull House 1910

Waiting for the Dispensary to Open, Hull House District, Chicago 1910

Child Labor In America 1908 - 1912

investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee

Child Slavery2 Million children under 15 yrs

worked for wages in 1910

"There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work."-- Lewis Hine, 1908