Picturing Class
312 pages, 7 x 9 1/4
174 b&w illus.
Paperback
Release Date:04 Nov 2015
ISBN:9781625341846
Picturing Class
Lewis W. Hine Photographs Child Labor in New England
University of Massachusetts Press
In this richly illustrated book, Robert Macieski examines Lewis W. Hine's art and advocacy on behalf of child laborers as part of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) between 1909 and 1917. A "social photographer"—as he called himself—Hine created images that documented children at work throughout New England, revealing their exploitation in the North as he had for rural working children in the South. Hine staged his images, highlighting particular types of labor in specific places: the "newsies" in Connecticut cities; sardine canners in Eastport, Maine; cranberry pickers in Cape Cod bogs; industrial homeworkers in Boston and Providence; and cotton textile workers throughout the region. His association with the NCLC connected him to a network of local and national reformers, social workers, and child welfare professionals, a broad coalition he supported in their fight to end this unethical labor practice. Macieski also chronicles Hine's efforts to mount major exhibitions that would help move public opinion against child labor.
In Picturing Class, Macieski explores the historical context of Hine's photographs and the social worlds of his subjects. He offers a detailed analysis of many of the images, unearthing the stories behind the creation of these photographs and the lives of their subjects. In telling the story of these photographs, their creation, and their reception, Macieski demonstrates how Hine worked to advance an unvarnished picture of a rapidly changing region and the young workers at the center of this important shift.
In Picturing Class, Macieski explores the historical context of Hine's photographs and the social worlds of his subjects. He offers a detailed analysis of many of the images, unearthing the stories behind the creation of these photographs and the lives of their subjects. In telling the story of these photographs, their creation, and their reception, Macieski demonstrates how Hine worked to advance an unvarnished picture of a rapidly changing region and the young workers at the center of this important shift.
Macieski attends to how gender, race, and ethnicity complicate narratives of child labor—showing Hine's distinctive visual rhetoric for different subjects. The author's immersion in the reform milieu of the early twentieth century and the primary research done for this book are phenomenal.'—Carol Quirke, author of Eyes on Labor: New Photography and America's Working Class
'Macieski's finely textured analysis of Hine's work and worldview makesPicturing Class a significant contribution to the history of photography. Hisawareness of the agency that the children possessed brings the book into fruitfulconversation with labor history and histories of childhood and capitalism.'—John Edwin Mason, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
'Hine's images carry their greatest impact when their stories are most clearly stated, and Macieski's book goes farther than any other scholarly literature on Hine in reconstituting the progression of images, the children's names and biographical information, the specific industries and factories involved, and the larger legal, cultural, and social issues around their work in these industries.'—Kim Sichel, The New England Quarterly
'This book serves as a model of how historians can engage photographs and visual sources as essential primary sources that drive an argument, rather than just as illustrations. It will be of significant interest to social and labor historians, public historians, and those interested in the visual culture of New England.'—Journal of American Ethnic History
Robert Macieski is associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester.
