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“Lewis W. Hine and
the Social Documentary Aesthetic”
In this one-hour lecture I explored the aesthetic influence of
Lewis Hine on social documentary photography. Known widely as
the father of the "straight" social documentary aesthetic,
Hine's influence can be seen not only in the famous
Depression-era photographs that are so famous but its importance
is apparent throughout twentieth-century art photography and
photojournalism.
The steamfitter
Although the foundations of social documentary photography can
be found in the work of Danish-American photographer and
journalist Jacob Riis, Hine's unique struggle in
post-Progressive America forced his artistic and intellectual
evolution from a "social photographer" to an "interpretive
photographer." Connected to the Photo-Secession through his
student Paul Strand, Hine was a master of the "straight" (unmanipula-ted)
image.
Because Hine saw his own photographic work as labor—as toil—he
had a sympathetic view of work and workers in the 1920s and
1930s. Most famous as a crusader for the abolition of child
labor in the early decades of the twentieth century, Hine's
post-World War I "work portraits" had a style and grace that
helped define what has come to be known as the "labored" culture
of the Depression-era in the United States (1929–1939).
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Child labor photographs are documents that condemned
exploitative labor, but his work portraits celebrated work as a
virtue in society, much in line with Hine's self-declared
"credo," William James's "The Moral Equivalent of War." James
called for a national workforce to subvert individuality for the
greater good of society. Hine's work had, for most of his
career, focused much more on "types" than individual portraits;
his allegiance to
James's thesis mixed with his own need for work allowed Hine to
show how machines
‘Skyboy’
(including the camera) were only important because of the
workers who used them and the people for whom they were
manipulated. Hine saw the “Moral Equivalent” in the big building
projects of the Depression, including the Tennessee Valley
Authority dam project and the Empire State Building.
Hine's legacy can be seen in the work of Farm Security
Administration photographers Dorothea Lange, Carl Mydans,
Russell Lee, and Ben Shahn and in the immensely successful
post-World War II Family of Man (1955) exhibit and book.
The photographic styles of both Robert Frank, the postwar
photographer who gave the world a decidedly less glamorous look
at the United States in The Americans (1957) and
Portuguese photographer Sabastiao Salgado, who revisited the
world of work in his landmark book Workers are visibly
influenced by Hine's integration of the worker with his (or
later her) work.
Kate Sampsell. Assistant Professor of American History,
Department of American Culture and Literature.
Newsletter No. 2
- 2003, Pg. 44
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