Sadie Pfeifer, a Cotton Mill Spinner, Lancaster, South Carolina

Photography and Media

1908

Lewis Wickes Hine
American, 1874–1940

Photography’s ability to record people, places, and things has often made it the prized medium for documenting society, from prison mug shots to medical studies to the horrors of child labor. Working for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine used photography as a means to an end, photographing children at work, from lone newsboys to factories full of young laborers. The resulting images were the visual spark to debates about reforming child labor laws. In this, his most famous photograph, a small girl stands before a cotton loom that seems to stretch the length of the room, dwarfing her in scale.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Lewis Wickes Hine
Title: Sadie Pfeifer, a Cotton Mill Spinner, Lancaster, South Carolina
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1908
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Inscriptions: Unmarked recto; stamped and inscribed verso, across left half, sideways, in blue ink and graphite: "[illegible/cut off/inscribed in graphite] / LEWIS W. HINES / INTERPRETIVE PHOTOGRAPHY / HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK [stamped in blue] / Spinner in cotton mill / N. Carolina 1908 [inscribed in graphite]"; inscribed verso, upper right, sideways, in graphite: "7 / 7"
Dimensions: Image/paper: 11.6 × 15.3 cm (4 5/8 × 6 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Acquired through exchange with George Eastman House
Reference Number: 1959.859
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/11344/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs from the Permanent Collection,” March 20–May 30, 1976. (Miles Barth)
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs by the Score: Personal visions twenty-some years apart,” October 7, 2006–January 14, 2007. (David Travis)
Art Institute of Chicago, “The Concerned Photographer,” March 18–June 11, 2006. (Katherine Bussard, Gregory Harris, and Newell G. Smith)
Art Institute of Chicago, “The Photographer’s Curator: Hugh Edwards at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1959-1970,” May 24-October 29, 2017. (Elizabeth Siegel)

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Sadie Pfeifer, a Cotton Mill Spinner, Lancaster, South Carolina

Currently Off View

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.