Social Photography and Social Work

"Social Photography"
I was really drawn to Lewis W. Hine's use of photography to document and raise social consciousness in American society about social issues, in particular child labor abuse and immigrant labor abuse, whose photograph each carried a lesson of its own. Hine uses photography with the ultimate objective of promoting and achieving social reform. Photography becomes, in his hands, a powerful tool for recording and making public the social injustices of many children and immigrants that existed in his era, and still today. He uses the means of social photography as an educational process. Furthermore, he states that every picture "was a piece of evidence, a record of social injustice, but also of individual human beings surviving with dignity in intolerable conditions." It was important to show this mere evidence, not only to educate the public, but also to raise sympathy and empathy in people, to hopefully inspire social change. I found this to be very reassuring. His essay states that "the greatest advance in social work is to be made by the popularizing of camera work, so these records may be made by those who are in the thick of the battle." As a person who has taken Social Welfare classes and is thinking about pursuing her degree in Social Work, I found it very interesting and empowering to see how photography- something I'm innately attracted to- can really be connected with the social issues and policies I'm interested in working with in the future.