foreclosing in the story daedalus and icarus

(below) subconsciously reminds me of that famous image by Henry Bowers of Scott and his party standing at the South Pole, the party knowing that Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the pole, and that now they had the long, arduous trip back to the Terra Nova pulling heavy sleds. One of these is James Leonard, another is Stanley Rasmus. The image Breaker #9, Hughestown Borough Pa. Covered in coal dust the boys rarely smile, and many die in industrial accidents or from Black lung. To look into Hine’s camera is to see into the soul of these human beings, to feel their distress and hurt. Whether it be large groups of Breaker Boys or groups of four he photographs at their height, imbuing these portraits with pathos and poignancy. There is no looking down on these people, he gets down to their level, he photographs them as human beings at the level of their incarceration. He incorporates both transcendentalism and realism in his works, in an attempt “to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions…” 3 Hine gets down to the subject level of his children. Hine pictures people and children just as they are, and believes in their innate goodness (as opposed to the hidden power of the body corporate, of industry and the machine). “A core belief of transcendentalism is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and the belief that society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, and they have faith that people are at their best when truly “self-reliant” and independent,” 2 while “literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of using a romanticised or similarly stylised presentation.” 3 Hine’s work emerges out of the American romantic movement with its links to transcendentalism, literary realism and social reform, a movement which included the likes of essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and poet and humanist Walt Whitman. In four words we might say: his work is faultless.

When you think that acknowledged pioneer of modernist photography, Alfred Stieglitz, was still taking Pictorialist photographs such as Excavating, New York (1911), The Ferry Boat (1910) and publishing The Terminal (1892) in Camera Work 36 in 1911… you begin to understand how revolutionary Hine’s stark, perfectly balanced, (sometimes flash) photographs really are, both in terms of their form and their function, that is, the advancement of social change. To add insult to injury, “After his death, the Museum of Modern Art was offered his pictures but did not want them George Eastman House in Rochester did.” 1 More fool MoMa, for in Hine we have the quintessential social documentary modernist photographer, way ahead of his time, taking photographs of child labourers in the first decade of the 20th century. What a fate for one of the greatest photographers the world have ever known. He died as destitute as anyone who ever sat for his lens.” 1 In Hine’s last couple of years he was so broke that he lost his house, stopped photographing and applied for welfare. Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration, thought he was difficult and past his prime and would not hire him. “By the late 1930’s he was just about out of work. After an assignment photographing the building of the Empire State Building in 1930-1931 work dropped off. He built an incredible body of work focusing mainly on photographs of the poor and underprivileged which captured the lives of immigrants, labourers and child workers in the early 1900’s.

Over roughly 30 years Hine, a trained sociologist, used his camera as an educational tool for social reform.

In this posting we have a small selection of digitally cleaned images from one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, Lewis Hine. Father said: “I promised em a little wagon if they’d pick steady, and now they have half a bagful in just a little while.” Jewel and Harold Walker, 6 and 5 years old, pick 20 to 25 pounds of cotton a day.

Foreclosing in the story daedalus and icarus