Lewis Hine
11 February–29 April 2012
Paseo de Recoletos, 23
28004 Madrid
Hours:
Mondays, 2–9pm
Tuesday–Saturdays, 10am–9pm
Sundays and bank holidays, 12am–8pm
Free Entrance
T 91 581 61 00
www.fundacionmapfre.com
www.exposicionesmapfrearte.com/lewishine
For the first time in Spain, FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE in collaboration with the George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), home of the archive of that name, is presenting a retrospective of the work of the American photographer Lewis Hine (Wisconsin, 1874–New York, 1940), one of the key figures for the aesthetic of social documentary photography. The exhibition will take place at FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE’s Recoletos site in central Madrid from 11 February–29 April.
Comprising a selection of 170 images, most of them vintage prints, the exhibition offers a complete overview of Hine’s career as a photographer while also locating him in the artistic, political and cultural context of his time. It opens with his earliest photographs of immigrants disembarking on Ellis Island (1904–1909, 1926) and child workers (1903–1913) and encompasses his work in Europe for the American Red Cross at the end of World War I (1918–19) and his series on the construction of the Empire State Building in New York (1930–1931). In addition, the exhibition includes documents and contemporary publications, some never previously exhibited, which have recently been acquired by the George Eastman House. Hine used these publications to promote social causes such as better housing and the closure of illegal sweatshops.
Trained as a teacher and sociologist, Hine abandoned the field of education in 1905 in order to devote all his attentions to photography and to focus on what he called “the visual side of public education”. Aware of photography’s huge potential for communication, he used the image to reflect the social injustice and poverty of the period in an effort to contribute to social progress.
Throughout his career Hine was active in the reforming movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His commitment to social change led him to document the effects of rapid urban growth, focusing his camera on the most underprivileged sectors of society such as newly arrived immigrants, child workers, the poor and other marginalised groups.
In 1908 Hine began to work as official photographer to the National Child Labor Committee, an organisation founded to combat child labour in heavy industry. For many years he documented the work of children in the countryside, in mines and in factories, collecting cotton or selling newspapers. Next to the photograph Hine carefully made a note of the child’s height, age and previous work experience, which allowed him to build up a comparative study over the years. Hine’s photographs of child workers provoked an outcry and were published in booklets and popular magazines such as Everybody’s and The Survey with the aim of denouncing the existing legislation.
At the end of World War I Hine made his only trip abroad to photograph the work of the American Red Cross with refugees across Europe. He photographed and described their lives in camps or among the ruins of their cities and homes, principally in France, Greece and Serbia. The experiences of these years and his contact with a different and previously unknown culture resulted in a transformation of Hine’s photographic idiom.
On his return to New York in 1919, Hine once again focused on the world of work, this time, however, with the aim of emphasising the dignity that it confers on the human being. The series that he entitled Work Portraits offers an overt exaltation of work and workers. These new photographs by Hine celebrate the traditional trades and the character of the specialist craftsman, but also emphasise positive skills within manufacturing and industry. In 1930 Hine was commissioned to document the entire construction of the Empire State Building in New York. Once again he decided to focus on the character of the construction workers. As with his Work Portraits, Hine’s photographs of the Empire State Building would be homages to the individual and to the importance of the worker, a reminder that “cities do not build themselves […], behind them lie men’s brains and sweat.” Photographs from a number of his different series were published in 1932 in Men at Work, the only book that Hine published and oversaw with regard to every aspect of its production.
By the late 1930s both social reform and photography had changed. Hine was offered less work and despite his early success lived the final years of his life dependent on charity, dismissed as antiquated or as difficult by the very reforming bodies that had previously so admired him.
Curated by: Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs, George Eastman House, Rochester.
Production: FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE Instituto de Cultura, Madrid, in collaboration with Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, Paris and Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
*Image above:
© Collection of George Eastman House, Rochester.