Lewis Hine's Child Labor Photographs. A Critical Analysis

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (John F. Kennedy Institue for North American Studies), course: Art and Radicalism in the United States, c. 1901-1929, language: English, abstract: Much like the polarizing discussions around finding and displaying truth in photographic meaning, social documentarian Lewis Hine's child labor photographs have attracted their share of heterogeneous interpretations. While his original intention of pursuing social change and having his photographic work act as a 'lever for social uplift' (Hine, 111) is not denied altogether, some scholars have questioned this work as actually supportive to an ideology reproducing the class system that it set out to alter.This essay looks at a multitude of perspectives on Hine's work, specifically focusing on one representative image of his work for the National Child Labor Committee during the Progressive Era, comparing the author's own analysis with interpretations of Alan Trachtenberg, Maren Stange and James Guimond among others to reassess questions of aesthetic and moral value in a representative photograph of the NCLC period.