Lewis Hine
The catalogue offers readers a new history of this great American photographer. A pioneer of what we might now call advocacy photography, Hine was aware of photography's power to inform and educate and influence as a form of mass media, as curator Alison Nordstrom points out in her essay for the catalogue. 'Hine understood his images not only as documentary evidence but as a specialised means to communicate information and ideas non-verbally. (Conor RischPhoto District News2013-02-19)With visual exposés on child laborers, impoverished immigrants and war victims inthe early 1900s, Hine forged an enduring brand of concerned reportage for everyone from WPA photographers to contemporary photojournalists. (American Photography2012-11-01)Commissions from the National Child Labor Committee produced some of his most haunting images: photographs of newsies, including one sleeping with papers for a pillow; a crowd of boy miners whose ghostly faces barely break the enveloping coal dust; a 5-year-old Mississippi shrimp picker. These images and more than 150 others are assembled in the handsome survey 'Lewis Hine' and capture Hine's belief in the essential nobility of labor. (Wall Street Journal2012-01-14)