This photograph below is part of a series that implied a significant event in history. The photographer behind these photos was Lewis Hine, an individual who worked enormously for social changes with photography as the tool.
This particular photo contains a young girl wearing a worn dress stands beside a cotton loom in the factory where she works. Why this scene is pretty significant? After the industrial revolution, America has faced an increasing demand for cheap labor. Children from underprivileged families are considered as options and sometimes as a better alternative because they demand considerably less. Hine introduced middle-class America to the ugly truth about children’s working conditions and the concept of children working in this dangerous sectors.
If we analyse the photos of Hine, he always put focus on the subject. In this case, we are seeing a girl in front of a big swing machine. Hine always used shallow depth of field, which creates a blurry surroundings. He used fine symmetry in this photo also. The machine is remarkably big and endless compared to the girl.
Hine took over 5000 photos about the child labor force and documented them with sufficient information in his notebook. He was hired by the National Child Labor committee in 1908 for recording the situation on child labor. He sometimes was not allowed to mills and waited outside and took pictures of workers coming in and going out. Sometimes the workers were willing to pose for a portrait and talk a bit about their wage, working conditions, and struggles.
We have seen how Hine’s activism with photographs made a change in the status quo about child labor. Hine’s searing images of those children remade the public perception of child labor and inspired the laws to ban it. The Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that would prohibit most employment of minors, wasn’t passed until 1938. Hine died two years later.
Lewis Wickes Hine was born on September 26, 1874. He was an American Photographer and Sociologist. He studied Sociology and became a teacher at New York City Ethical Culture School. Between 1904 and 1909, Hine took over 200 plates (photographs) and came to the realization that documentary photography could be employed as a tool for social change and reform.
Documenting events is easier these days with many facilities, gears and could convenience in work. But Lewis Hine has shown us how to bring change in the worst situation possible.