Abstract
A wide variety of studies have functioned to make Progressive-era photographer Lewis W. Hine a recognizable household name. Despite the proliferation of these monographs, photo books, scholarly articles, and museum exhibitions, a large number of the artist’s region-specific photographs still remain untouched by historical research. By locating and exploring Hine’s photographic documentation of certain places, historians are beginning to unearth previously unknown aspects of state and local history, gaining a better understanding of the larger social, political, and cultural climate of specific locations at particular points in time. This photographic essay uses selections from Hine’s 1910 photographs documenting child labor on the cranberry bogs of New Jersey in order to introduce the reader to an underdocumented aspect of Garden State history and its connection to the Italian immigrant enclaves of nearby Philadelphia. In depicting the work of Italian laborers from Philadelphia who traveled to the New Jersey Pinelands for work, Hine’s photographs draw attention to the ongoing issue of migrant labor—an important element of the history of the mid-Atlantic region. These images also add another dimension to the larger labor history of Italian immigrants in Philadelphia, one that has yet to be fully explored by historians of the Italian American experience.