Women Seamstresses in Sweatshop
1999.17.01
Lewis Hine was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform and his photographs were instrumental in changing the child labour laws in the United States. Declaring that he "wanted to show things that had to be corrected," he was one of the earliest photographers to use the photograph as a documentary tool. In 1904, Lewis Hine photographed immigrants on Ellis Island, as well as at the tenements and sweatshops where they lived and worked. In 1911, he was hired by the National Child Labor Committee to record child labor conditions, and he produced appalling pictures of exploited children. During World War I, Hines worked as a photographer with the Red Cross and later photographed the construction of the Empire State Building.