Eastman House presents the documentary work of Hine, Thomson, Lange, and Post Wolcott in Facing the Other Half

Powerful images capture Victorian London, child labor, and the Depression

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — This spring George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film presents three displays of photographs that incited social change by four of the greatest documentary photographers in history — Lewis Wickes Hine, John Thomson, Dorothea Lange, and Marion Post Wolcott. More than 50 photographs will be presented collectively under the title Facing the Other Half — Hine's photographic indictments of child labor; depictions of Depression-era landscapes and people, crafted by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers Lange and Post Wolcott; and the streets of Victorian London through Thomson's lens. The images will be on view March 8 through June 15, 2008, as part of Eastman House's exhibition series Loss/Hope.

Lewis Wickes Hine: Let Children Be Children
A selection of 20 photographs from Lewis Wickes Hine's crusade against child labor. Hine spent 10 years photographing in the canneries, coal mines, cotton mills, farms, and sweatshops common during the early 20th century. Through the use of photography, he worked to gain the attention of the government and arouse public sentiment against child labor practices in the United States.

Hine was a sociologist whose photographs captured his abiding concern for children, immigrants, and working-class people. He was hired by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in 1906 to document the harsh conditions in which children worked. A telling look at the industrialization of America, the photographs reveal the circumstances that poor working children endured until legislation against child labor prevailed as late as 1938.

The featured images from 1906 to 1913 powerfully communicate the photographer's objective to incite social change of child labor laws. The entire series begged to be heard by a depressed early 20th-century society, and now by a semi-detached, but sympathetic public.

John Thomson: Street Life in London
Selections from Thomson's publication Street Life in London (1878), a 12-month series that intended to spur change in the moral, sanitary, and working conditions of the urban poor. The collective publication, containing all the illustrated essays of the series, was one of the first true photographic social documentaries.

Thomson gained his reputation photographing the Far East, but it is his photographic illustrations in Street Life in London for which he is most recognized. Authors such as Charles Dickens had been writing about the plight of the urban poor as early as the 1830s in the hopes of stirring a sense of moral duty in the middle and upper classes of Victorian society. Reform-oriented legislation was passed between the 1850s and 1880s in order to rectify the problems in public health, education and working conditions, but by the 1870s not much had changed. One essay in Street Life states, "as our national wealth increases, can we be too frequently reminded of the poverty that nevertheless still exists in our midst."

What distinguishes Street Life from other publications is that the three images per essay were photomechanically reproduced using the Woodburytype, as well as the quality of the images. Thomson was of the first to use the Woodburytype, invented in 1864, to photomechanically mass produce photographs for publication adding an important level of veracity to the subject matter. The warm purple-red hues of the Woodburytypes mimic the tones of albumen prints, making them pleasing and familiar to Victorian sensibilities as photographs.

The compositions of the images add much by way of understanding the intent of the series. By creating distance between the photographer and the subject he is seeking the reformation of the living conditions of the people he is photographing, but not necessarily suggesting their political or social elevation.

The photographs do, however, place the subject in context of their environment and support the notion that these people are integral to city life. Although they are documenting a social "type," the images pay close attention to the individual as representative of their class and occupation, an approach employed 60 years later by the photographers of the U.S. Farm Security Administration photographers.

(Women) Picturing the New Deal:
The FSA Photographs of Dorothea Lange and Marion Post Wolcott
From 1935 to 1944, a government agency called the Farm Security Administration (FSA) commissioned a crew of talented photographers to document the poverty and deprivation plaguing the nation as a result of the Great Depression, under the direction of Roy Stryker, director of the FSA Historical Section. Among the most notable of the photographers are Dorothea Lange and Marion Post Wolcott.

Lange, working for the agency from its inception (1935 to 1939), produced some of the most iconic images of the Great Depression and is recognized as one of the greatest American photographers. She is known for her genuine humanitarian perspective and her ability to capture subjects' sorrow and desperation, but also their pride and dignity. Post Wolcott's photography for the FSA (1938 to 42), the most lyrical work in the FSA collection, continues to depict the plight of the impoverished with sympathy, but also, at the instruction of Stryker, attempts to depict a positive attitude of change.

The works by these two photographers that will be on display as part of this exhibition exemplify the achievements of the FSA, in documenting the nation's social and economic desolation across a range of geographical regions and over the course of the agencyÕs existence.

The displays of Facing the Other Half were curated by students of Eastman House's master's degree program in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management. The Hine display was curated by Tess Sparkman and Marilia Fernandes; the Thomson photographs by Allan Phoenix and Alice Carver-Kubik; and the Lange/Post Wolcott display by Alison Demorotski and Frances Cullen.

Loss/Hope Series
In a series of exhibitions opening throughout winter and spring 2008, George Eastman House focuses on the photograph's unique ability to take its viewers to parts of the world they might not otherwise know. From the slums of 19th-century London, to the Depression dust bowl, to the variety of contemporary lives in black America and the Middle East, the series Loss/Hope informs us and asks for our engagement by considering the notion of loss, both personally and as a result of industrialization and poverty. The Loss/Hope series is sponsored by Nixon Peabody LLP.

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