Lewis Hine and the Building

Lewis Hine and the Building of America

Lewis Wickes Hine, whose photographs of the building of the Empire State Building, among others, taken beginning in 1930, depicted workmen perched nonchalantly on the steel beams so far up in the sky that one could not discern what was below them, pictured how America was built. Hine was a photographer who loved to catch a face just beginning to smile or to look up in awe. His portraits of Americans just arriving in Ellis Island, wandering the streets of New York or working up a sweat in coveralls, showed the seamier and more realistic side of life in the 1930s (Troncale 2007 1).

In his photographs covering the building of the Empire State Building, Hine showed how young and old had to work hard for their dollar in loose-fitting coveralls, their faces glistening with sweat, oil and iron dust. This was the reality of the day when young men would gladly risk their lives, without benefit of grappling hooks and lines, as they walked and climbed steel beams and wires to put together the tallest building in the world (at that time). They might have been immigrants or Native Americans, but they worked together, as one can tell from their portraits, as a team, talking with a system of hand gestures, as there were few ways to communicate at such distances as they had to work from each other. They look as if they came from everywhere and are of every age, as they are depicted as crusty, old men with white beards or youth who are barely in their teens with white teeth gleaming in a big smile. They look surprisingly relaxed and at home in their perch high in the sky. They seem at ease and unafraid as they handle huge plates of iron and swing enormous steel beams. This was the workday of the common laborer in the 1930s, working with their hands and their muscles in dangerous places. These are the ancestors of current Americans, who dared to risk their lives, yet showed pride in their work, making very little money during those difficult times. If it weren't for the camera and for the skill of the photographer, one would never be able to see how these men from the past labored so hard to build the skyscrapers Americans are now familiar with.