Lewis Hine Research Paper

Lewis Hine was a teacher. He began modestly by teaching natural study and geography. It was here that Hine found his passion for photography. Photos taken by Hine were used as tools to support the content he taught in his classes. From here, after leaving his job as a regular educator to do freelance photography, Hine grew to teach much more than two subjects, he taught all of the United States what the human side of industry was like so that they would be able to see the man behind the machine. Particularly Hine wanted to show the United States the atrocity of child labor. He did this during one of his early jobs by taking photographs for the National Child Labor Committee (Denzer). It was during his time with the NCLC that Hine took his stand against the driving force of the American Industrial Revolution — child labor. After his departure from a career in teaching, Hine became a photographer for hire (Denzer). Because of this, the driving force of Hine’s photographs was often who hired him. It was during one of his early assignments that Hine first began to photograph …show more content…
Hardly ever do you see one of Hine photographs that contains children displaying a happy expression, they are nearly always shown with tired expressions, not jubilant ones that may be expected. Additionally, the work space that the children are in shows how terrible the work was. One of Hine’s photographs depicts what is labeled as a five year old boy barefoot in front of a mountain of oyster shells, wearing an apron that appears to be dirty from working amongst the oyster shells (Hine4). The boy, as with all of the children, appears tired — worn out from years of doing work meant for someone much older than he, someone much taller than he, and someone more educated than he is. The caption of this photograph went as far to state that the young boy did not even yet understand