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Details
- Date
- 1913
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- gelatin silver photograph
- Dimensions
- 11.7 x 8.8 cm image; 17.7 x 12.7 cm sheet
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Gift of the Sydney Camera Circle 1977
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 21.1983
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Lewis Wickes Hine
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
Lindale, GA April 1913. Norman Hall, 210 Park Street, Lindale, GA. Went to work over a year ago in Massachusette Mills at 10 ½ Years old. Family record says born October 16, 1901. Doffing. No real reason for his work as father and several others are working. (National Child Labor Committee caption card)
Lewis Hine was one of America’s most important social documentary photographers. He was educated as a sociologist, and later taught science and photography at the Ethical Culture School in New York. One of his students was Paul Strand, America’s seminal modernist photographer. In the early decades of the 20th century Hine used photography as a tool to describe social conditions, relying on the veracity of the image as evidence which was used to substantiate claims made by progressive social reformist organisations.
'Norman Hall, Lindale, GA' is from a vast survey Hine undertook between 1908 and 1918 for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in which he investigated the working and living conditions of children across America. His combination of ‘straight’ photographic technique and information-rich captions enabled the succinct illumination of the human cost associated with exploitative employment practices. At the time his findings achieved massive circulation in newspapers, not only raising public awareness, but in his words: ‘My child-labour photographs have already set the authorities to work to see “if such things can be possible”. They try to get around them by crying “Fake” but therein lies the value of the data and a witness. My “sociological horizon” broadens hourly.’1
1. Goldberg V ed c1981, ‘Photography in print: writings from 1816 to the present’, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque pp 247–48
© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007
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Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
International Photographs from the Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 Jan 1991–14 Apr 1991
From the Street - Photographs From the Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 27 Apr 1996–14 Jul 1996
American Beauty: from Muybridge to Goldin, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 05 Jun 2003–27 Jul 2003
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Bibliography
Referenced in 3 publications
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Judy Annear, From the street: photographs from the collection, Sydney, 1996. no catalogue numbers
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Judy Annear, American beauty: from Muybridge to Goldin, Sydney, 2003. no catalogue numbers
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Martyn Jolly, Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 'International photo-documentary', pg.151-167, Sydney, 2007, 152, 158 (illus.).
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