Priceless Children: American Photographs 1890-1925: Child Labor and the Pictorialist Ideal [Paperback]

George Dimock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2002

"Priceless Children" includes vintage photographs of working class and middle-class children at the turn of the 19th century. Lewis Hine's pioneering documentation of immigration and child labour are compared and contrasted with the pictorialist work by six of his contemporaries: F. Holland Day, Gertrude Kusebier, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Clarence White. Hine's working-class children, portrayed for reform-minded audiences as victims of harshly inhumane conditions, often display a freedom, exuberance, sociability, and autonomy that their more priviledged and closely guarded peers might well have envied. Conversely, the bourgeois interior, in the iconography of fine-art photography, did not always or unambiguously register as a safe haven in a heartless world. This book suggests that establishing the value of the "priceless child", part of whose history can be seen in photographs, is an always-unfinished project.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

George Dimock is associate professor of art history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Other contributors include Tom Beck, Verna P. Curtis, and Patricia J. Fanning.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 029598192X
• ISBN-13: 978-0295981925
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 8.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,888,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)