Lewis Hine - Child Labour

Lewis Hine viewed his camera as ‘a powerful tool for research’ and photographed child workers in an attempt to instigate legislation against child labour.

The children are shown at work, usually with the equipment they operate in the background.

His photographs were mainly records of the terrible conditions in the mills and used as evidence.

He saw the camera as a means to ‘vivify’ empirical, scientific facts; to flesh them out, to prove them. The camera, for Hine, was fundamentally a source of truth. The photograph was an unmediated reflection of the world ‘outside’, a true record of the subject stood before it. (Tagg, 1988:195)

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is no major issue with my work.  I am not trying to change laws, but my photographs are a kind of evidence that the night workers I photograph exist.  As they do ‘hidden’ jobs, jobs many people take for granted, I am revealing them in the hope that people who do these kinds of jobs are recognised and appreciated.

 

The style of these photographs is not dissimilar to how I'm photographing my workers - simple portraits.