Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago Slums

Lewis Wickes Hine

Date

1910

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

United States

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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 one end of society and the destitution at the other. It must have a deep and abiding sense of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experiment. Its residents must regard the entire life of their city as organic, to make an effort to unify it, and to protest against its [economic] over-differentiation.

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