Cotton Mill Workers

1903

Buys a camera and a magnesium flash gun

Hine acquires a camera and a magnesium flash gun and, by trial and error, masters his equipment in order to illustrate school life. Other accounts say he began photographing in 1905.

1907

Becomes staff photographer of the Russell Sage Foundation

Hine photographs life in the steel-making districts and the people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the influential sociological study The Pittsburgh Survey.

1908

Becomes photographer for the National Child Labor Committee

Inspired by the success of his photographs of immigrants, Hine leaves teaching to become the staff photographer of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), which launched the first campaign in US history against the exploitation of children in industry. Over the next decade he documents child labor, especially in the Carolina Piedmont, to aid the committee's lobbying to end the practice; Hine himself had worked long hours in a factory as a boy.

1908–1918

Gains entry to mills and factories under false guises

To get into the mills, mines and factories where child labor was hidden from the public, Hine posed as a fire inspector, an insurance agent, a postcard or Bible salesman, a preacher, or even an industrial photographer recording factory machinery. Factory police and foremen often threatened him with violence or even death; travelling the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he photographed child miners, weavers, dockers, stokers, farmhands and garbage collectors.

1918–1919

Travels to Europe with the Red Cross

In 1918 Hine joins the Red Cross and is sent to France, then to Italy and Greece, photographing the relief work of the American Red Cross in Europe; he returns to New York in 1919.

1930s

Works for the Red Cross and the TVA

During the Great Depression Hine again works for the Red Cross, photographing drought relief in the American South, and for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), documenting life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee.