This is the first full-length examination of Lewis H. Hine (1874-1940), the intellectual and aesthetic father of social documentary photography. Kate Sampsell-Willmann assesses Hine's output through the lens of his photographs, his political and philosophical ideologies, and his social and aesthetic commitments to the dignity of labor and workers. Using Hine's images, published articles, and private correspondence, Lewis Hine as Social Critic places the artist within the context of the Progressive Era and its associated movements and periodicals, such as the Works Progress Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, the Chicago School of Social Work, and Rex Tugwell's American Economic Life and the Means of Its Improvement. This intellectual history, heavily illustrated with HIne's photography, compares his career and concerns with other prominent photographers of the day--Jacob Riis, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White. Through detailed analysis of how Hine's images and texts intersected with concepts of urban history and social democracy, this volume reestablishes the artist's intellectual preeminence in the development of American photography as socially conscious art.

This poetic and beautiful picture book chronicles the travels of Lewis Hine, who used his camera to document child labor in the early twentieth century. Stunning visuals and poetic text combine to tell the inspiring story of Lewis Hine (1874–1940), a teacher and photographer who employed his art as a tool for social reform. Working for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine traveled the United States, taking pictures of children as young as five toiling under dangerous conditions in cotton mills, seafood canneries, farms, and coal mines. He often wore disguises to sneak into factories, impersonating a machinery inspector or traveling salesman. He said, “If I could tell this story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug a camera.” His poignant pictures attracted national attention and were instrumental in the passage of child labor laws. The Traveling Camera contains extensive back matter, including a time line, original photos, and a bibliography. Ages six to nine.

A documentary account of child labor in America during the early 1900s and the role Lewis Hine played in the crusade against it.

Hine, widely known for his photographs of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and his studies of child labor, brings enormous technical ability and sensitivity to these images of construction workers, railroad and factory workers, miners, foundation men, welders, and the builders of the Empire State Building.

Nearly 80 years after his death, Lewis Hine's name is revered in the world of photography and practically synonymous with the labor reforms of the Progressive Era. His body of work--much of it a century old or more--remains vital as both aesthetic statement and social document. Drawing on a range of sources, including information from surviving family members, this first full-length illustrated biography presents a detailed and personal portrait of the sociologist and photographer whose haunting images of children at work in cotton mills and coal mines sparked the movement to end child labor, culminating with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. There are 62 of his penetrating photographs included.

The documentary style that dominates American photography had its origins in the social reform publicity campaigns of the turn of the century. This study traces the history of this genre and its main participants, including Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Russell Lee.

Considers five documentary sequences or narratives: the antebellum portraits of Mathew Brady and others; the Civil War albums of Alexander Gardner, George Barnard and A.J. Russell; the Western survey and landscape photographs of Timothy O'Sullivan, A.J. Russell, and Carleton Watkins; and social photographs and texts by Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis Hine; as well as documentaries inspired by the Depression, esp. Walker Evans's American Photographs.

The Realisms of Berenice Abbott provides the first in-depth consideration of the work of photographer Berenice Abbott. Though best known for her 1930s documentary images of New York City, this book examines a broad range of Abbott’s work—including portraits from the 1920s, little known and uncompleted projects from the 1930s, and experimental science photography from the 1950s. It argues that Abbott consistently relied on realism as the theoretical armature for her work, even as her understanding of that term changed over time and in relation to specific historical circumstances. But as Weissman demonstrates, Abbott’s unflinching commitment to “realist” aesthetics led her to develop a critical theory of documentary that recognizes the complexity of representation without excluding or obscuring a connection between art and engagement in the political public sphere. In telling Abbott’s story, The Realisms of Berenice Abbott reveals insights into the politics and social context of documentary production and presents a thoughtful analysis of why documentary remains a compelling artistic strategy today.

Between 1908 and 1917, the American photographer and sociologist Lewis Hine (1874–1940) took some of the most memorable pictures of child workers ever made. Traveling around the United States while working for the National Child Labor Committee, he photographed children in textile mills, coal mines, and factories from Vermont and Massachusetts to Georgia, Tennessee, and Missouri. Using his camera as a tool of social activism, Hine had a major influence on the development of documentary photography. But many of his pictures transcend their original purpose. Concentrating on these photographs, Alexander Nemerov reveals the special eeriness of Hine's beautiful and disturbing work as never before. Richly illustrated, the book also includes arresting contemporary photographs by Jason Francisco of the places Hine documented. Soulmaker is a striking new meditation on Hine's photographs. It explores how Hine's children lived in time, even how they might continue to live for all time. Thinking about what the mill would be like after he was gone, after the children were gone, Hine intuited what lives and dies in the second a photograph is made. His photographs seek the beauty, fragility, and terror of moments on earth.

After beginning his career as a photojournalist for a daily newspaper in southern California, Dan Winters moved to New York to begin a celebrated career that has since led to more than one hundred awards, including the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography. An immensely respected portrait photographer, Dan is well known for an impeccable use of light, colour, and depth in his evocative images. In Road to Seeing, Dan shares his journey to becoming a photographer, as well as key moments in his career that have influenced and informed the decisions he has made and the path he has taken. Though this book appeals to the broader photography audience, it speaks primarily to the student of photography--whether enrolled in school or not--and addresses such topics as creating a visual language; the history of photography; the portfolio; street photography; personal projects; his portraiture work; and the need for key characteristics such as perseverance, awareness, curiosity, and reverence. By relaying both personal experiences and a kind of philosophy on photography, Road to Seeing tells the reader how one photographer carved a path for himself, and in so doing, helps equip the reader to forge his own.