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Lewis Wickes Hine (American, 1874-1940), Oyster Shuckers (#2058), circa 1911. Gelatin silver print. New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum purchase, Women's Volunteer Committee Fund and Dr. Ralph Fabacher.
In Dunbar, Louisiana, Hine used his camera to reveal children packed shoulder to shoulder and working feverishly in an oyster packing plant. The titular subject of the photograph above, Johnnie, aged 9, has to stand on the rail just to reach the oysters to shuck. Hine also annotated each image he made, including details like the hours worked (3:30 am to 5:30 pm) and the number of “pots” of seafood each child was expected to process each day. This photograph also features the “boss of the shucking shed” with a pipe and bowler hat in the background. This man offered that “I have to lie to ‘em,” to entice workers from Baltimore, an attitude that fits his lurking posture here. Hine traveled throughout the country photographing children working long hours and at dangerous tasks in textile mills, factories, meatpacking plants, and mines. Hine’s own work was dangerous, as he was traveling in states resistant to protections for child workers and into facilities where bosses did not want poor working conditions exposed. The results were straightforward, un-retouched photographs with a modern sensibility. They helped set a standard for the documentary photography tradition that exploded in the United States between the World Wars.
