Chicago Slums
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 11.7 × 16.4 cm (4 5/8 × 6 1/2 in.)
Classification
gelatin silver (developing-out-paper) pr
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
11351
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The photographer shadows and speaks to his subject. Sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine worked for social justice throughout his career, concentrating often on immigrant laborers. He held views very similar to Chicagoan Jane Addams. In the year this Chicago picture was taken, Addams published Twenty Years at Hull House, referring to the settlement home for immigrants that she had founded in the city with Ellen Gates Starr: The Settlement is an attempt to relieve the overac-cumulation at on...
About the Artist
Lewis Wickes Hine · 1874–1940
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940) was born on September 26 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to Douglas and Sarah Hine, who ran a coffeehouse and restaurant on Main Street. After his father's accidental death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound around 1892, the teenage Hine supported his widowed mother and sisters through various jobs while pursuing education. He attended Oshkosh Normal School, where he met ment...