When a Photographer Turned His Focus on Social Injustice, It Helped Usher in the First Child Labor Laws

Article excerpt

Lewis Hine, a photographer in the early 1900s, approached his camera work as detective work, sometimes using ruses to gain access to factories and mills, to document the brutal reality of child labor. His stark, emotionally powerful images of children in dangerous working conditions became evidence in legislative campaigns and ultimately helped catalyze the passage of America's first child labor laws. Hine didn't see himself as an artist or documentarian but as an activist with a camera, willing to bend the rules to expose injustice that statistics alone could not convey.