Lewis Hine

(American, 1874–1940)

Lewis Hine was an American photographer best known for the images he made while working for the National Child Labor Committee. Hine’s interest in photography as an educational tool prompted him to adopt the medium to expose social injustices. “Photography can light up darkness and expose ignorance,” he once said. Born Lewis Wickes Hine on September 26, 1874 in Oshkosh, WI, he studied sociology before moving to New York in 1901. He began using photography while working at the Ethical Culture School as a way to document the conditions of immigrants pouring into Ellis Island. The artist embarked on his photographs of child workers in 1909, and in order to keep what he was doing a secret from the factor owners, posed as a Bible salesman or industrial photographer. These works had an immediate effect on government policy after they were published in magazines. Hine was nearly forgotten by the 1930s, but was saved from obscurity after Berenice Abbott mounted a traveling retrospective of his work in 1939. The artist died on November 3, 1940 in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. Today, Hine’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., among others.