Kindly, trustful, wistful, amazingly innocent,his front is a mask for his power. He looks like anunworldly schoolteacher, needing protection from therigors of the everyday world. But behind this disarmingapparent naïveté is an artistry and directness and determination that has etched the history of an era into theconsciousness of the country. He must have been about five feet four or five inches tall, slight in stature, always wore a tie, shirt and jacket. Lewis Wickes Hine [1874-1940] remain..

Perrier, Frédéric

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 Transatlantica
Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal 
2 | 2006
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Lewis Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson
Frédéric Perrier
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Lewis Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson
Frédéric Perrier
Kindly, trustful, wistful, amazingly innocent,
his front is a mask for his power. He looks like an
unworldly schoolteacher, needing protection from
the
rigors of the everyday world. But behind this
disarming
apparent naïveté is an artistry and directness and
determination that has etched the history of an
era into the
consciousness of the country.1
1 He must have been about five feet four or five inches tall, slight in stature, always wore a
tie, shirt and jacket. Lewis Wickes Hine [1874-1940] remains one of the most outstanding
figures in the history of American documentary photography. Like many famous painters
or musicians, his talent was unrecognized by the public during his lifetime. For almost
thirty years many of his photographs have been and still  are on exhibition.  His best
known  are  the  series  he  did  on  Ellis  Island,  National  Child  Labor  Committee,  Work
Portraits,  Men  At  Work,  Empire  State  Building,  Shelton  Looms,  Works  Progress
Administration, National Research Project, Pittsburgh Survey and his European photos.
2 When I wrote my D.E.A dissertation about Hine I came across a set of photographs that he
made where he lived: in the village of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. (USA). Some of them
were available on the Eastman House website, but Muriel Olsson and Fatima Mahdi from
the Hastings Historical Society offered me a “gem”: photos which had never been publicly
exhibited. Friends, students, firemen, local politicians, classrooms, buildings, teachers:
here, at last, I could see those with whom Hine had lived, not professionally, but during
his private life in Hastings [1917-1940]. It was a real community. One of his neighbors,
Lewis Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson
Transatlantica, 2 | 2006
1
Richmond Shreve, was a principal in the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon that
designed the Empire State Building and recommended Hine for the job of photographer.
Lewis W. Hine, Demonstration of proper bed making in a Hastings High School home economics class.
Photograph shows Marion Braginetz (second from left), Marie Sydlowski (later Lucko) (third from left),
and Jenny Filipovitch (fourth from left), 1935 (ca), gelatin silver print, 7 x 5 inches, Courtesy of the
Hastings Historical Society, Hastings on Hudson, New York, U.S.A 
3 The photographs in this exhibition were taken between 1929 and 1940. Some will remind
you of his Work Portraits, many others are reminiscent of the photographs he took at the
beginning  of  his  career  at  the  Ethical  Culture  School  in  New  York—an  educational
institution that was comprised largely of middle-class German-American Jews, first and
second generation sons and daughters of immigrants—where Hine taught nature study,
geography  and  photography.  Parallel  to  photographing  immigrants  arriving  at  Ellis
Island, he documented school life: dancing clubs, science classes making around 1,000
plates from 1905 to 1908. Hine’s Hastings photographs show how the Hastings students
were trained at the lathe or how to repair an engine in the Hastings High School machine
shop, how girls were instructed in how to make a bed in the Hastings High School home
economics class and students working in the Farragut Middle School library. Besides the
official school photographs that Hine was hired to take as a commercial photographer, he
also created a large photographic mural for the Hastings school building. It was called
“Men at Work” (like his only book published in 1932) and consisted of three photographs
of construction workers on the Empire State Building. 
Lewis W. Hine, Teacher Clayton Blakeslee and students in an industrial arts class in the Hastings High
School, 1930s (ca), gelatin silver print, 5 x 7 inches, Courtesy of the Hastings Historical Society,
Hastings on Hudson, New York, U.S.A.
4 Hine’s interest in celebrating the American laborer was the focus of his photographs in
the 1920s-30s. The Work Portrait methodology, a form of “positive” documentation, is
also evident in Hine’s Hastings photographs.
5 Lewis Hine was familiar with Education.  He had studied at the University of  Chicago
under Colonel Francis Parker, John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young, and in 1905 he received a
degree  of  Master  of  Pedagogy  from  New  York  University.  Actually,  some  other
photographs shown here are illustrations from “A Program for the Development of  More
Adequate Secondary Education in a Suburban Area” a PhD thesis submitted in 1936 to the
School  of  Education  at  New  York  University  by  John L.  Hopkins  who  was  the
Superintendent of Schools for Hastings from 1923 to 1951. One of the main concerns of
the dissertation was meeting the educational and recreational needs of the children of
immigrant  parents  from  the  poorer,  overcrowded  industrial  area  near  the  Hudson
waterfront.
Lewis W. Hine, “Village” Boys at the Recreation Room (School Buildings), n.d., gelatin silver print, 5 x
7¼ inches, Courtesy of the Hastings Historical Society, Hastings on Hudson, New York, U.S.A
6 Hastings Police Commissioner Frederick H. Charles Sr., firefighters, politicians such as
village President and Mayor Thomas F. Reynolds, and village trustees are also displayed.
Whether for his country or his village, the notion of citizenship was central to Lewis Hine.
When  researching  my  M.A  thesis  (“Immigration  and  Social  Reform:  Lewis  Hine,  His
Patterns of Personal Growth and Creative Expression—1874-1918”) I uncovered that Lewis
Hine attended Columbia University in the Fall of 1907 as a non-matriculant in the Division
of Political Science. A few years later, he was hired by the National Child Labor Committee
[1906 to 1918]: child-labor movements were not an isolated phenomenon but rather a
Lewis Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson
Transatlantica, 2 | 2006
2
constituent part of the Progressive Movement. Social workers had to gather facts to have
a bill passed. Hine wanted to build a better world with his photographs. Certain evils had
to be eradicated and it was this only which mattered to him. His assistance was central to
the NCLC because he was much more than a photographer and reformer: he was also a
“documentarian”. He would sometimes travel 50,000 miles a year with his 5x7 Graflex.
Like a police inspector, he went where the children worked (mills, canneries, factories,
mines, fields, city streets) to capture details that would give people another view of child-
labor and above all, to show the opponents to child-labor regulation how very mistaken
they were: “My child-labor photos have already set the authorities to work to see ‘if such
things can be possible.’ They try to get around them by crying ‘fake,’ but therein lies the
value of data & [sic] a witness. My ‘sociological horizon’ broadens hourly.”2 
7 Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson was not an isolated person.  On the contrary.  During my
research, I read many letters from neighbors and children of neighbors telling how much
Hine was involved in the life of Hastings-on-Hudson. In 1923, Lewis Hine and his wife,
Sara,  even offered the use of  their  home at  170 Edgars Lane until  larger permanent
quarters could be secured for another school.
8 Recently  I  was  sent  two  more  Hine  photographs  of  the  family  of  the  dentist  Dr.
Finkelstein that Hine made in exchange for dental services. Lewis Hine, who was a close
friend of the Finkelsteins, took family portraits to pay for his dental work. Muriel Olsson
and Fatima Mahdi, of the Hastings-Historical Society, told me that “In the 1920s and 1930s
Hastings  was  an  industrial  town  with  many  immigrant  families,  and  during  the
Depression no one had much money.  People would often barter  for  Dr.  Finkelstein’s
services. This barter included groceries and home-grown vegetables, hand-made doilies,
and  two  lovely  French  chairs.  A  French  woman  gave  him beautiful  gowns  for  Mrs.
Finkelstein; Mr. Rohrbach, a local tailor, gave the doctor two custom-made suits. And
even  local  doctors  traded  their  services  for  dental  work.”  One  photo  shows  Louis
Finkelstein and his wife Rose and his children Jerry and Rita, ca. 1936-7. It was taken in
the backyard of their home at 141 Farragut Avenue in Hastings. The other is Jerry and
Rita, taken ca. 1931. 
Lewis W. Hine, Dr. Louis Finkelstein and his family, Wife Rose and his children Jerry and Rita, It was
taken in the backyard of their home at 141 Farragut Avenue in Hastings, 1936-1937 (ca), gelatin silver
print , 8 x 10 inches, Courtesy of the Hastings Historical Society, Hastings on Hudson, New York, U.S.A
9 Because no work could be found by Lewis Hine, in 1939 the Hine family lost their home to
the Federal Home Loan Bank Board—yet continued to live there on a monthly basis.
10 At this point,  the best way of showing how much Lewis Hine mastered photography,
cared for his fellow citizens, and how much he loved his village is to let the images “speak
”…
NOTES
1. Robert W. Marks, ‘Portrait of Lewis Hine’, Coronet, (February 1st 1939) Vol 5, No 4, Whole
No 28:147-157. 
Lewis Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson
Transatlantica, 2 | 2006
3
2. Daile Kaplan, Photo Story: Selected Letters and Photographs of Lewis W. Hine (Washington
and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) 7.
INDEX
Thèmes : Trans’Arts
AUTEUR
FRÉDÉRIC PERRIER
frederic.perrier@gmail.com
Lewis Hine in Hastings-on-Hudson
Transatlantica, 2 | 2006
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