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