Lewis Hine was employed for a decade as a staff photographer, field researcher, and writer by the National Child Labor Committee. The United States Congress chartered the committee in 1907 with a mandate "to investigate and report the facts concerning child labor." Hine wished to catalogue the range of ways in which employers exploited children in the era before child labor laws were enacted in the United States. Traveling to mills and mines across the country, he amassed more than 5,000 negatives for the committee. His photographs showing the harsh realities of child labor helped change employment laws for children. By 1911 five states had implemented the eight-hour day for children and seven had prohibited night work.

As a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York, Hine instilled the principles of social documentary photography in subsequent generations of American photographers. A social reformer above all, Hine also took an artist's pride in the quality of his pictures, valuing light as the most important element of his work. Hine pursued truth and objectivity through his photographs, yet his passion for his subject is ever-present in the pictures.

View a brief biography and other works by this artist in the Getty online collections.