Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874–1940)

US sociologist and photographer. His dramatic photographs of child labour conditions in US factories at the beginning of the 20th century led to changes in state and local labour laws.

Trained as a sociologist at the University of Chicago and New York University, Hine began to document social conditions by photographing the immigrants coming into the USA at New York's Ellis Island 1904–08, as well as their tenement homes and the places and sweatshops in which they worked. His publication of those photos 1908 is considered the first ‘photo story’. The National Child Labor Committee hired him to travel extensively in the USA, photographing child labour conditions 1911–16. In later years, Hine photographed various government projects and construction of the Empire State Building, published 1930 in his Men at Work.