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American sociologist and muckraker photographer Lewis Wickes Hine made it his life’s work to chronicle dangerous and unjust working conditions in the early 20th century. His social change-driven career began in 1907 as a staff photographer for the Russell Sage Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving American social and living conditions. In 1908, Hine became the National Child Labor Committee’s photographer, where he posed as a fire inspector, a bible salesman, a postcard peddler, a machinery inspector and more to smuggle his camera behind the scenes of factories, mills and mines under threat of physical violence and death. Lucrative and booming industries built on the tiny backs of indentured children did not want their realities exposed. This effort was followed by years of wartime photography abroad with the American Red Cross.
After coming back home, the seemingly fearless Hine was hired to document the construction of the Empire State Building. This meant once again risking life and limb to capture images of the wild work environment both he and the laborers he photographed found themselves in. Just like them, Hine would scale the derricks, climb out on jutting beams, and hang 1,000 feet in the air with no safety net.