They were the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses of 1900s America – but to legendary sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine, they were also subjects for his groundbreaking work.
Hine, who was born in Wisconsin before moving to New York to teach, became famous for his photography and social research which focused on workers and immigrants that he saw in the Big Apple.
While some pictures served only to record the conditions some people were forced to live and work in, Hine also saw the possibility of photography to bring about social change.
In 1908 he left teaching and went to work for the National Child Labor Committee, traveling the country to document America’s child workers.
The subject was so taboo that he often had to disguise himself to get access to the factories and mines where these children worked, and was threatened with death and violence multiple times after being discovered.
But the effort proved well worth it, as his pictures were instrumental in bringing about the passage of the Keating–Owen Act which prohibited the inter-state trade of goods produced by children, and was America’s first child labor law.
Now 24 rare prints of Hine’s work are now going up for auction at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on February 15 and are expected to fetch thousands of dollars each.
Perhaps his most iconic image, dubbed Powerhouse Mechanic which features the stamp of his studio on the back, is valued at up to $100,000.
Powerhouse Mechanic, by Lewis Hine, was taken in 1921 and is the most expensive of his prints to be auctioned, at $100,000. Hine was a sociologist who used photography as part of his teaching, focusing on the working classes and immigrants, largely centered around New York, where he took classes before becoming a photographer full-time. These images were collected by Isador Sy Seidman who owned the Seidman Photo Agency and was a patron of Hine
During the construction of the Empire State Building, Hine was drafted in to document the toils of the workforce, using a specially designed basket to swing out above the streets of Manhattan and capture the men toiling away – who were of course protected by no such safety equipment. He spent much of his time suspended 1,000ft above Fifth Avenue. Here, a man rides a crane hook, taken some time between 1930 an 1931
Hine’s legacy comes from his time working for the National Child Labor Committee, when he documented the plight of child workers around America. In this shot, young workers break coal in a Pennsylvania mine. Hine often had to disguise himself in order to get access to such places, posing as a fire inspector, postcard vendor and even a bible salesman
Here a girl works in a mill in a cotton mill somewhere in the Carolinas, taken in 1908. During the course of his child labor project, Hine was often threatened with violence and death. But his images and the work of the committee were instrumental in passing the Keating–Owen Act which prohibited the inter-state trade of goods produced by children, and was America’s first child labor law
A group of what Hine referred to as ‘newsies’ – street newspaper vendors – on the streets of New York, taken in December 1906. While the ages of the boys here is unknown, Hine found children as young as five selling papers in other cities, noting that a lot of them worked until late in the evening to get rid of their stack
Girls eat their lunch in this print entitled Noon Hour In East Side Factory District, which was taken in New York in 1912. This was taken four years before the passage of the Keating-Owen act, and helped turn the tide of public opinion in favor of regulating child labor in America
An Italian family having just arrived on Ellis Island, in 1905, standing in in the baggage room. In 1860, just 1,400 residents of New York city were Italian, but between 1900 and 1914, almost two million Italians emigrated to America, with most of those landing in the Big Apple. By 1930 a million had chosen the city as their home, making up 17 per cent of the population. Today it is home to the third largest Italian population outside of Italy itself
Another focus of Hine’s work was immigration, and he frequently took his students to Ellis Island – which was then used as a receiving center for those coming by boat to New York – to photograph the new arrivals. Left is a Russian mother with her two children who arrived on the island in 1905, and right is an Italian mother and her daughter, photographed in 1907
Left is a print entitled Climbing Into America, which was taken on Ellis Island in 1908, and shows mostly Russian immigrants fresh off the boat to New York. Right, a Slavic woman falls asleep on her luggage having just arrived. Poverty and ongoing persecution of Russian Jews led to more than two million fleeing the country between 1880 and 1910, with a million of those putting down roots in New York, Boston or Chicago
Hine captures an Italian family riding the ferry in to Ellis Island in 1910. Most of Hine’s pictures of immigrants come from before 1908, when he left his job at the Ethical Culture School to photograph child workers, but he did sometimes return to his roots to capture photographs like this one. Between 1892 and 1932, when it closed its doors, more than twelve million immigrants were processed on Ellis Island
Left is a woman pictured at Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago, in 1910. The house was run by a group of university-educated women as a project to provide educational opportunities and services to impoverished residents of the cities in which they were based. Pictured right is an Italian steel worker, his overalls and face covered with the grime of his industry, who was captured in Pittsburgh in 1909
This image is simply entitled Artificial Flowers, taken in New York City, and is dated 1912. Hine gives no information on what the flowers were for. As well as documenting children brought into work in factories, Hine set out to examine how children were also used to labor at home, often having to help their parents when work was plentiful but deadlines short
While some of Hine’s pictures sought to bring about social changes, others simply acted to document the lives of the poor and working class in America as part of his sociology teaching. Here, a family are pictured in a tenement building somewhere in Chicago in 1910. An rapidly growing population in the early 20th century, driven in large part by migration, saw the city add half a million residents in just 10 years. Many ended up in dangerous, shoddily-built housing such as this
Hine did not always focus his lens outward. In this rare print, left, he captures a printer working at the Ethical Culture School in New York in 1905, the school where he taught until leaving in 1908. Right, is a print entitled New York Patriarch at Ellis Island, also taken in 1905. Having spent his entire life photographing the poor, Hine ended his life as one of them, losing his house and living off welfare checks
Sol Hymans Pawnbroker, a shop in Nashville, Tennessee, captured in 1912. While Hine was mostly focused on the East Coast, he did spend some of his time in the South, at first in the cotton mills and then, during the Great Depression, photographing drought relief work being carried out by the Red Cross. He later worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority, documenting life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee
Hot day on East Side, an image captured by Hine in New York in 1908. By 1900, as the population of New York exploded, more than 80,000 tenement buildings were constructed, with 2.3million people inhabiting them – a full two thirds of the city’s population. A typical tenement building had five to seven stories and was cramped, hot, and dark. Only the street-side apartments got any light, and those inside the building were lacking ventilation as well, unless residents put it in
Hine was among a group of photographers brought in to document the construction of the Empire State Building, which began in March 1930. In this image, workers affix girders to the main structure of the building, toiling hundreds of feet in the air with no safety equipment. Despite this only five workers were killed during the construction, according to official figures, though some news outlets put the toll significantly higher
The first steel beam was laid at the Empire State construction site on March 17, 1930, and from that point the construction progressed at the astonishing pace of a floor per day, on average. The 86 floors were topped out in September that year, with the mast added by November. The spire was initially intended to be a docking station for blimps, but this idea was abandoned
Worker stand on a platform close to the top of the tower, with its shadow falling in the street. Hine got the job of photographing the construction because he was friends with Belle Moskowitz, publicist for the tower, who proposed the project. He dubbed the workers ‘sky boys’, and the images were later published in a collection called Men at Work