About This Image

With ink annotation verso (likely by Sid Grossman): "Lewis Hine - about 1905 or so / from Photo League Collection (?) NYC". This is a rare vintage print of an iconic image, not one of the more common later ones printed in 1942 for the Hine's posthumous portfolio.

Provenance: probably from Photo League Collection Archive obtained by previous owner from Sid Grossman, an officer and early member of the Photo League.

Toning to paper and light silvering, else very good, high contrast image.

Immigrants helped fuel the rapid growth of the steel industry in Pittsburgh. More than four out of five of the common laborers in Carnegie's Allegheny County steel plants were Eastern Europeans. They were the ideal labor base because they often arrived in the United States alone with the intention of returning to their home countries and were willing to work long hours for low wages. These factors, as well as their isolation from local workers, made them unreceptive to labor unions.

Born in Oshkosh, WI, Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940) studied sociology at the University of Chicago before moving to New York in 1901 to work at New York’s Ethical Culture School, where he adopted photography to enhance his lessons. While teaching at the Ethical Culture School, Hine realized the power of photography as an educational tool. His initial class excursions were to Ellis Island in 1905, where he taught his students how to use photography to document and understand the world around them.

Hine himself began to photograph immigrants, people experiencing poverty, and the exploited as a means of studying and describing the social conditions faced by many. These images, along with his pictures of harsh urban conditions published in the Pittsburgh Survey (1907-08), brought his work to the attention of the National Child Labor Committee. He served as its official photographer from 1911 to 1916.

He later traveled with the Red Cross, documenting the effects of World War I. After returning to the United States in 1922, he accepted commercial assignments, produced another series on Ellis Island immigrants, worked on Works Progress Administration projects, and photographed the construction of the Empire State Building (1930-31).

Hine died impoverished at the age of 66, despite the enduring legacy of his compositions and significant contributions to social reform. He is known today as the father of American documentary photography.

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