The faces of child labor in America in the 1900s were the focus of social photographer Lewis W. Hine. Working as a “social photographer” in the early 1900s, Hine documented children at work and provided visual evidence of their exploitation. Hine believed those photographs worked as a “social lever” compelling child labor reform.
In his latest book, “Picturing Class: Lewis W. Hine Photographs Child Labor in New England,”Robert Macieski, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, accompanies photographer Lewis W. Hine as he traveled through the region between 1909 and 1917 photographing child labor for the National Child Labor Committee.
Macieski will talk about his newest book and share images of Hine’s work at a book signing on Thursday, January 28, from 5 - 6 p.m. at UNH Manchester, 88 Commercial Street in room 456.
“Picturing Class” explores the social and cultural production of Hine’s photographs and the social reproduction of his subjects, the working class children of the region. In their making, Hine’s photographs also connected local and national reformers, social workers and child welfare professionals into a broad coalition of the professional middle class whose progressive reforms erected the institutional scaffolding of the emergent welfare state.
Hine carefully constructed his images, and on each of his travels he highlighted particular types of labor in specific places. Hine photographed newsies in Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford, Conn.; cotton textile workers in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; sardine canning in Eastport, Maine; industrial homework in Boston metropolitan area and Providence, R.I.; picking cranberries in the bogs of the Cape; and cultivating tobacco in Connecticut.
Two chapters are developed around specific exhibitions, one in Boston for the “Boston 1915” movement and one in Providence on Child Welfare. One chapter is focused on vocational training in Boston, and a short final chapter on the eight-hour day in the textile industry in New Bedford, Mass.
Robert Macieski
Professor of History; B.A., Boston College, 1980; M.A., ibid., 1982; Ph.D., ibid, 1993. Professor Macieski’s major fields are 19th and 20th century American social and cultural history, with specialties in labor and industrial history, urbanization, immigration, race and women’s history. Professor Macieski also teaches and practices public history and is Director of the Museum Studies Program. In 2004, Professor Macieski was honored by the Fulbright Commission with an appointment as the Nikolay Sivachev Distinguished Chair in American History at Moscow State University.
Between 1999 and 2002, UNH named Prof. Macieski the Roland O'Neal Professor. In 1998 Prof. Macieski was selected to receive the UNH Manchester Teaching Excellence Award and was also awarded a UNH Graduate School Summer Fellowship.
Location: UNH Manchester, 88 Commercial Street, Fourth Floor, Room 456
Contact: Julie Demers, Julie.Demers@unh.edu, 603-641-4360
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