1909

Midnight at the Bowery Mission Breadline

American, 1874 - 1940

For Hine, photography was a tool of social reform. He used the camera to record the wrongs of child labor, poor working and living conditions, and other injustices in his native New York City and, later, throughout the United States. Such work often necessitated the use of flash, as he routinely photographed in poorly lit factories and tenement houses. Hine worked with an early flash technique that was as dramatic as it was hazardous: igniting loose magnesium powder to produce a momentary and blinding flash of light. This photograph was taken at 2:00 a.m. at a Lower East Side charitable mission that opened nightly at midnight to distribute coffee and bread to the homeless and jobless.