The Slater Mill Historic site has an original collection of Lewis Hine photographs taken in northern Rhode Island in 1909 and 1912. You can imagine how I felt when Slater Mill contacted me ( Scott Lapham ) saying they had a grant to create a show of the original Lewis Hine photos with a modern update to be shot by myself and Photographic Memory assistants. The Opening is April 25th from 5-7pm at the Slater Mill gallery at 67 Roosevelt Ave in Pawtucket RI.

Lewis Hine was one of a handful of photographers (that we know of) who worked to create the genre of photography we now call social documentary. He is famous for his images of immigrants coming to Ellis Island, the living and working conditions of industrial laborers and steel workers building the first sky scrapers in New York City. He is perhaps most well known for his photographs exposing child labor. When shown to Congress, these photographs had a direct effect on passing laws stopping underage work and protecting children in the workplace.

For me this project has become a meditation on time more than anything else. Through the privilege of following in Lewis Hine's footsteps both literally and metaphorically, I see how challenging it is to achieve societal "progress" as Lewis Hine would likely have defined it. Time changes everything for better or worse. While in Lewis Hine's day there were factories with challenging working conditions there were also jobs for a blue collar workforce. Today, when the majority of manufacturing jobs have left overseas and it takes fewer and fewer people to accompolish the same tasks, it seems there are truly not enough jobs in our urban areas. When possible I photographed the same locations he did showing what has happened 100 years later. Some factories are empty, some are flea markets and some don't exist at all. While most textile manufacturing has traveled overseas, I did photograph one working factory in Central Falls that looks remarkably like it would have during Hine's visit. Most of the locations Hine photographed were in poor parts of Providence and Pawtucket. Because they were poor many of these locations were torn down to make way for on and off ramps to highways and parking lots. Most of these areas are still struggling neighborhoods but one spot where a child was selling newspapers outside a saloon at midnight is now a college campus. While many living in the Untied States do find they must work longer and harder to make ends meet the conditions most people work in are unarguably safer. Also unarguable is the fact that child labor is no longer a part of our labor culture. These were the goals Lewis Hine spent his adult life working towards. These passions defined his art. Even as our world today is filled with challenges old and new it is encouraging to me that Lewis Hine and his art helped create a better world nearly 100 years later. I would hope that he would feel the same.