Download - Ch.7 Social Reform
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.
Jacob Riis, Tenament Yard, Mulberry Bend, 1877Riis came to NY from Denmark in 1870.
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.
Riis, Bandit’s Roost, Mulberry Bend, 1877
Riis, 5 Cents a Spot
Lantern slides - the type used by Riis to illustrate his lectures on social reform.
Riis, Man Slept Here for Five Years
Riis, Ancient Lodger and the Plank on Which she Slept
Lewis Hine, Climbing into America, 1904
Hine, Girl With Doll, 1904
“The picture is the language of all nationalities and all ages. The averageperson believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify. Thisunbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken,for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph. It becomesnecessary, then, in our revelation of the truth, to see to it that the camerawe depend upon contracts no bad habits.” - Lewis Hine, in a speech to the National
Child Labor Committee in 1909
Hine, Boy in Glass Factory
Hine’s style - objective facts with subjective emotions would be
seen as the workings of the “concerned photographer.”
Hine, Breaker Boys in a Coal Mine
Hine, Cigar Factory
Hine, 10-Year old Spinner
Hine, Making Pillow Lace
Hine, Making Human Junk, 1910.
Hine, Picking Berries
Hine, from Men at Work, 1932