Hine was able to leverage the extraordinary power of the camera's image, which "went beyond logic and language" to the heart instead of the mind. Photography was now being used as a tool for social change. The photographs spurred people to work toward state and federal legislation to enact child labor standards. These changes did not happen overnight, by any means, but the photographs were the impetus of other advocacy to come. The widespread publicity of Hine's photographs continued to encourage attempts at child labor reform and states began to pass stricter laws that banned the employment of underage children. Eventually, in 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, or the Federal Wage and Hour Law, which was declared constitutional in 1941.
With all the magazines presently on the newsstands, it is difficult to understand why Life Magazine made such an impact for so many years. Yet, its introduction in 1936 was the first time that Americans across the country saw visuals of people, places and events outside of their own small community. As this photography document states, this was as big as the Gutenberg press. The magazine, which was received by a mass market, covered everything possible -- politics, home life, advertising, happy events, tragedies, employment, animals, world cultures. The world was opened up to the readers. They could actually envision themselves outside of their daily lives at another place and time....
There were photographs in newspapers, but they were black and white and often muddy and difficult to see. Life Magazine's photographs, first in black and white and later in color were actually larger than life. In one photo spread of several pictures, an entire story could be told from the beginning to the middle to the end. It was only when the computer arrived that the magazine lost its luster. Yet, it had a long run, and greatly impacted millions of readers.
The still photographs during the Viet Nam War also impacted millions and proved that it did not take an entire photo spread, four color or dark room maneuvers to impact the viewers. Whereas Hine normally captured posed photographs, many of the photographers during the Viet Nam War captured the action. They stopped time and forced people to see the agony that existed during that one hundredth of a second, be it at Kent State University when the guards shot the students, in Viet Nam as the nude girl ran down the street after being napalmed or in Cambodia when the monk burned in his own fire. These horrifying photos were a strong emotional force that moved people to action. As early as Eadweard Muybridge, photography had the power to make the previously invisible highly visible and tangible and, with prints such as these during Viet Nam, come alive off the page.
