PHOT 154, History of Photography, Grossmont College, Social Reform Photography, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Lantern slides, child labor

1. Photography as Social Reform
• Photography was used early on to record the lives of the poor.
• Reform organizations and charities used photographs of the
poor to promote their organization’s work.
• Millions of people came to New York in the 19th Century,
looking for personal freedom and the opportunity to make a
better life.
• A series of post-Civil War depressions left many immigrants
jobless and living in disease-ridden tenement buildings.

2. Jacob Riis, Tenament Yard, Mulberry Bend, 1877
Riis came to NY from Denmark in 1870.

3. In Mulberry Bend, the East Side’s worst slum district, thousands of
homeless children scavenged for food until the were old enough to
join criminal gangs.

4. Riis, Bandit’s Roost, Mulberry Bend, 1877

5. Riis, 5 Cents a Spot

6. Lantern slides - the type used by Riis to illustrate his lectures on
social reform.

7. Riis, Man Slept Here for Five Years

8. Riis, Ancient Lodger and the Plank on Which she Slept

9. Lewis Hine, Climbing into America, 1904

10. Hine, Girl With Doll, 1904

12. “The picture is the language of all nationalities and all ages. The average
person believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify. This
unbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken,
for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph. It becomes
necessary, then, in our revelation of the truth, to see to it that the camera
we depend upon contracts no bad habits.” - Lewis Hine, in a speech to the National
Child Labor Committee in 1909

13. Hine, Boy in Glass Factory
Hine’s style - objective facts with subjective emotions would be
seen as the workings of the “concerned photographer.”

14. Hine, Breaker Boys in a Coal Mine

15. Hine, Cigar Factory

17. Hine, 10-Year old Spinner

20. Hine, Making Pillow Lace

21. Hine, Making Human Junk, 1910.

22. Hine, Picking Berries

23. Hine, from Men at Work, 1932