Lewis Hine: The child labour photos that shamed America Lewis
Hine is most famous for his photographs of the construction
workers who helped build the Empire State Building in 1930. But
in the years before he celebrated the heroic labour of these men
working high above Manhattan, Hine used his photographs to
campaign for social reform. In 1908 the then-sociology professor
was hired by the National Child Labor Committee to document how
children as young as seven were working in cotton mills and coal
mines. Over a decade he took thousands of photographs that
helped convince US lawmakers to introduce new industrial
regulations to protect children. Alison Nordstrom, senior
curator of photographs of the George Eastman House in Rochester,
New York, talked to the BBC about the new book of this historic
photographer's work, entitled simply Lewis Hine. Photographs
courtesy of George Eastman House International Museum of
Photography and Film, in Rochester, NY. George Eastman House
holds the Lewis Hine archive. Produced