Lewis Hine: Photographer, Activist, Character

Lewis Hine: Photographer, Activist, Character

Alison Nordstrom, the curator of a retrospective of the work of the early 20th-century photographer Lewis Hine, has come to know him as the Walt Whitman of picture-taking.

via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/lewis-hine-photographer-activist-character/

Since our material is vintage material, there are sometimes these amazing annotations on the backs of these prints. I often say the back of a photo can tell you more than the front. In that period, he is really gathering evidence, and so the notations have the name of the child and the height of the child. He measured the height of his buttons on his vest. He always wore a suit and tie to the ground so that he could ascertain the heights of these little children by measuring them against the buttons on his jacket.