Lewis Hine

On the occasion of the exhibition, FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE has published a catalog in Spanish, English and French which will become a benchmark publication on the work of Lewis Hine. Apart from a careful selection of 170 photographs made throughout his career, the catalog includes a text by Alison Nordström, curator of photography of the George Eastman House in Rochester and curator of the exhibition. She traces his photographic career positioning Hine’s images in the context of their creation, and approaches the role assigned to his work by photography historians, and their later contribution to one of the greatest benchmarks of documentary photography.

An article of the time is also given by the North American writer Elizabeth McCausland, an active member of the Photo League and an influential figure in the photography community between 1920 and the end of 1940. Her critical writings on documentary and social photography and the work by Lewis Hine were decisive to direct the attention of historians. Here the following is reproduced, Lewis Hine: Social photographer, written in 1938, places the early reformist work of Hine within the parameters of documentary aesthetics, which at this time was particularly relevant.

The catalogue is completed with a chronology, a bibliography and a facsimile Men at Work (1932), the only book Lewis Hine published throughout his life and which he supervised very closely.