Lewis Hine in Maryland — Opening Reception

The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents an Opening Reception for the exhibition Lewis Hine in Maryland, on display from August 24 through December 18. The exhibition will be accompanied by Lisa Oppenheim/Lewis Hine: Spine/Verso.

From 1908 to 1924, documentary photographer Lewis Hine (American, 1874–1940) traveled throughout the United States, using his camera to document child labor on behalf of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). He photographed children working in coal mines, cotton mills, farms, tenements, and city streets. The NCLC used Hine’s photographs and eyewitness reports to support its campaigns for labor regulation and reform. His images appeared in pamphlets, posters, traveling exhibitions, and lantern-slide presentations across the country. Ultimately, these searing photographs helped shape labor legislation in the United States and established a model for documentary photography.

Lisa Oppenheim/Lewis Hine: Spine/Verso

Lewis Hine in Maryland is accompanied by an installation of two works from artist Lisa Oppenheim’s Spine series, in which she appropriates images by Lewis Hine from the Library of Congress. Enlarged to life size, the photographs depict the backs of adolescent textile workers whose bodies were curved and misshapen by their labor. Oppenheim has bifurcated each image along the vertical axis of the spine, emphasizing the physical impact of repetitive work on the body. Lisa Oppenheim/Lewis Hine: Spine/Verso places Oppenheim’s works in dialogue with a selection of photographs from UMBC’s Lewis Hine Collection, displayed with their versos — or backs — visible to viewers.

In 2023, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation Assistance Grant, Special Collections staff undertook a major initiative to rehouse the Lewis Hine photographs and digitize their versos. The backs of the photographs bear captions, annotations, and inscriptions by Hine and others employed by the NCLC, testifying to their use in the organization’s publications and promotional campaigns. Together, these materials reveal the many forms of labor documented in Hine’s work and the ways that labor is imprinted upon — and remains legible within — the bodies of his subjects.

Image: Lisa Oppenheim, Correct posture for 4663. Need for advice of examining physician, 2016. Dye sublimation print on aluminum, 41 3/4 x 61 1/2 inches; 106 x 156.2 cm (overall). Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

Visitor Information

Admission to the opening reception and to the exhibition is free. For driving directions and parking information, please visit here.

Top image: Lewis Wickes Hine, Marie and Albert Kawalski. 615 S. Bond St., Baltimore, Md., 1909. Gelatin silver print, 5 x 7 in. The Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), P825.