Social photographer lewis hine biography

BORN: September 26, 1874 • Oshkosh, Wisconsin

DIED: November 3, 1940 • Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Photographer; social reformer

Lewis Wickes Hine was a teacher-turned-reformer who exchanged his classroom for a camera and set about changing the world, one child at a time.

Hine's most famous photos featured children at work—in fields, factories, mills, and anywhere else young children were forced to work. His photographs were not effective because he was expertly skilled, but because the raw quality of his work reinforced the tone of harshness and despair that accompanied child labor.

He was a pioneer in the field of photography as art.

"I wanted to show things that had to be corrected."

Hine also used his talent to document relief efforts after World War I (1914–18), the construction of the Empire State Building, and the plight of women workers in the 1930s.

Because of Hine's work, America has a recording of its evolution throughout the Gilded Age and the