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“Soon you will know my pain and experience the smile
of its black-toothed grin.”
~Migrant Farmer, American Dustbowl
Although there are thousands of extraordinary photographers, there are only a handful who have used their gift to document the human condition and significantly advance the cause of humanity.
Lewis Hine
Photographer Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He studied sociology at Chicago and New York universities, becoming a teacher, then took up photography as a means of expressing his social concerns.
His first photo essay featured Ellis Island immigrants. In 1908, Hine left his teaching position for a full-time job as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, which was then conducting a major campaign against the exploitation of American children.
From 1908 to 1912, Hine took his camera across America to photograph children as young as three years old working for long hours, often under dangerous conditions, in factories, mines, and fields. Hine was an immensely talented photographer who viewed his young subjects with the eye of a humanitarian.
There is no finer photographer than Lewis Hine
Walker Evans
Walker Evans (November 3, 1903-April 10, 1975) was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans’s work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8×10-inch camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are “literate, authoritative, transcendent.” Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums, and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art or George Eastman House.
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914), was a Danish American social reformer, muckraking journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for his dedication to using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City, which was the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He helped with the implementation of “model tenements” in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. As one of the most prominent exponents of the newly practicable flash, he is considered a pioneer in photography.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895-October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.