not come into common use until 20 years after Hine
began to photograph. As the social and didactic con-
tent of Hine’s photographs dim with the passage
of time—while their value as historic documents
grows—the elegance of the work remains. Contem-
porary viewers might care to use Walker Evans’s
formulation, ‘‘documentary style’’ for the best of
Hine’s photographs.
In 1918, Hine quit his position with the NCLC
when they, feeling the struggle to regulate child
labor was successful, reduced his salary. He took a
job with the American Red Cross and photo-
graphed the aftermath of World War I in France,
Greece, and the Balkans, returning to the United
States in 1919 where he organized exhibitions for
the American Red Cross Museum, which had been
founded in Washington, D.C. that year. He also
photographed Red Cross-sponsored rural health
programs. After 1919, Hine was not associated
with any organization, and he began to call himself
an ‘‘interpretive photographer.’’ Until he was com-
missioned to photograph the construction of the
Empire State Building in 1930, Hine’s only income
was from freelance work. He organized exhibitions
of his work, includingInterpretation of Social and
Industrial Conditions Here and Abroad, which was
shown at the National Arts Club and the Civic
Club, both in New York City, in the fall of 1920.
He continued to supply photographs toThe Survey
throughout the 1920s, but the Progressive move-
ment continued a decline precipitated by WWI.
During this time, Hine returned to Ellis Island for
new work there as well as taking assignments from
unions and advertising agencies, but his main pro-
ject was the celebration of the industrial worker,
including photographs taken while documenting
the construction of the Empire State Building.
This culminated in the only book of his work pub-
lished in his lifetime,Men at Workin 1932; it gar-
nered considerable acclaim. These photographs,
like all of Hine’s work, focused on the human indi-
vidual within, this time, the literal framework of the
steel. A portfolio of photographs of loom workers
in textile mills was exhibited at the 1933 World’s
Fair in Chicago and published that year asThrough
the Loomas well as inThe Survey. In the same year,
an assignment photographing the Tennessee Valley
Authority dam projects at Wilson and Muscle
Shoals in Alabama ended when his photographs
were published without crediting him. By 1938, he
could no longer earn a living from his photography.
In his last years, Hine twice unsuccessfully applied
to the Guggenheim Foundation for grants, but more
shamefully, in retrospect, is Roy Stryker’s refusal to
hire Hine for any Farm Security Administration work,
considering him ‘‘past his prime.’’ As Hine slipped
further and further into poverty, he was getting
increasing recognition for his photographs beyond
their utility from the critic Elizabeth McCausland,
the young art historian, Beaumont Newhall, and
above all from photographers, especially Berenice
Abbott, and the young documentarians in New
York’s The Photo League. In 1939, a retrospective of
Hine’s work was successfully mounted at the Riverside
Museum under the sponsorship of an umbrella group
ranging from the New York City comptroller, his
long-time supporter the sociologist and editor, Paul
Kellogg, Berenice Abbott, and even Alfred Steiglitz,
no doubt with the encouragement of Paul Strand.
After Hine’s death in 1940, his son Corydon gives
the Hine’s archive to The Photo League. Upon its
dissolution, Walter Rosenblum, acting on behalf of
the League’s membership, donated the archive to the
George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.
RichardGordon
Seealso: Documentary Photography; History of
Photography: Nineteenth-Century Foundations; Mod-
ernism; Newhall, Beaumont; Riis, Jacob; Social Repre-
sentation; Steiglitz, Alfred; Strand, PaulBiography
Lewis Wickes Hine born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 26 Septem-
ber 1874. Attended University of Chicago, 1900; relocates
to New York City to teach at Ethical Culture (Fieldston)
School, 1901. Given camera by ECS principle, Frank A.
Manny, begins photographing Ellis Island immigrants.
Receives Pd. M. degree from New York University,
1905; attended Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
Columbia University, 1907. Staff photographer for
National Child Labor Committee and photographer and
art director for their magazineCharities and Commons
(later The Survey), 1908–1917. Establishes studio in
upstate New York, advertising his services as ‘‘Social
Photography by Lewis W. Hine,’’ 1912. Photographer
for American Red Cross, 1917–1919. Awarded Art Direc-
tors Club of New York, medal of photography, 1924.
Works for government and corporate clients 1921–1939.
Died in Dobbs Ferry, New York, 4 November 1940.Individual Exhibitions
1920 Interpretation of Social and Industrial Conditions Here
and Abroad; Civic Arts Club and National Arts Club,
New York, New York
Woman’s Club, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
1931 Yonkers Museum, Yonkers, New York
1939 Riverside Museum, New York, New York, and traveled
to Des Moines Fine Arts Association Gallery, Des Moines,
Iowa, and New York State Museum, Albany, New York
1967 Lewis W. Hine: A Traveling Exhibition; George East-
man House, Rochester, New York
1969 Lewis W. Hine: A Concerned Photographer; Riverside
Museum, New York, New YorkHINE, LEWIS