Empire State Of Mind

The photographs of Lewis Hine never fail to amaze me no matter how many times I see them. Hine would use his camera as a tool for social reform and in particular focus on mans contribution to industry. He was commissioned by the National Child Labour Committee to document child labour in industry in America and the resulting photographs were instrumental in the changing of child labour laws. I think it amazing that photographs can not only have this amount of influence and power to change a law that has been in place for so many years but to change the way people think about the issues as well.

In the 1930s Hine was commissioned to document the construction of the Empire State Building, these pictures fascinate me. The workers would work up there with no harnesses, no safety precautions whatsoever, Hine endured the same dangerous conditions to get the best vantage points of the workers. The majority of the workers were immigrants from Europe and would undoubtedly be getting paid peanuts considering the work that they were doing. The construction started in March 1930 and ended May 1931, and the statistic that I’ve found for the death count of construction workers is five, which, if it’s true, I find quite surprisingly low. Having been up the Empire State Building myself, I find it quite incredible that these workers could have worked at such heights. I don’t suffer from any fear of heights, at least not anything that’s caused any set backs for me, but I remember standing on the 86^th floor looking over the side and suddenly feeling a strange sense of vertigo, my knees were shaking and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I take my hat off to the brave workers who risked their lives.

I remember seeing this photograph years ago, probably as a kid, and not thinking a lot of it. It is an image constantly reproduced and shown and some people have even bought it on canvas from high street shops and hung it on their wall. It had no effect for me because I presumed it to be fake, I figured the men in the image must have been digitally put in that setting because in my mind "no one would be that high up, sat like that without any safety harnesses". I was obviously pretty naive because when I found out that the image was real I was suddenly fascinated by it, it makes me feel a little sick just looking at it. Although it was not taken by Hine, it was taken by Charles Clyde Ebbets, you see that same theme as is running in Hine's images.