August 24 – December 18, 2026
From 1908 to 1924, documentary photographer Lewis Hine (American, 1874–1940) traveled throughout the United States, using his camera to document child labor on behalf of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). He photographed children working in coal mines, cotton mills, farms, tenements, and city streets. The NCLC used Hine’s photographs and eyewitness reports to support its campaigns for labor regulation and reform. His images appeared in pamphlets, posters, traveling exhibitions, and lantern-slide presentations across the country. Ultimately, these searing photographs helped shape labor legislation in the United States and established a model for documentary photography.
In July 1909, Hine visited Maryland, photographing child workers at Bottomley berry farms in Anne Arundel County and at the J. S. Farrand Packing Company in Baltimore. Drawn from UMBC’s Photography Collections, this exhibition explores the places and people behind these photographs. A selection of Hine’s most iconic and enduring images situates his Maryland work within the broader context of his documentary project. The exhibition also examines how Hine’s photographs functioned as tools of visual persuasion, working in tandem with captions, pamphlets, slogans, and posters to shape public opinion—and ultimately legislation—regarding the changing role of children in the workforce and in American society.
This exhibition commemorates MD250 and the US Semiquincentennial, exploring themes foundational to the nation’s history, including immigration and migration, the power of documentary photographs, and social justice.
Public Programming
Curatorial tour and opening reception
Thursday September 17, 5:00 p.m. Free and open to the public
Panel Discussion: Food and Labor in Maryland
Thursday October 22, 6:00 p.m. Followed by a reception. Free and open to the public.
This event is co-organized with Department of American Studies and the Orser Center for Public Humanities at UMBC
Closing reception
Thursday December 4, 6:00 p.m.
Lisa Oppenheim/ Lewis Hine: Spine/ Verso
August 24 – December 18, 2026
Lewis Hine in Maryland is accompanied by an installation of two works from artist Lisa Oppenheim’s Spine series, in which she appropriates images by Lewis Hine from the Library of Congress. Enlarged to life size, the photographs depict the backs of adolescent textile workers whose bodies were curved and misshapen by their labor. Oppenheim has bifurcated each image along the vertical axis of the spine, emphasizing the physical impact of repetitive work on the body. Lisa Oppenheim/Lewis Hine: Spine/Verso places Oppenheim’s works in dialogue with a selection of photographs from UMBC’s Lewis Hine Collection, displayed with their versos—or backs—visible to viewers.
In 2023, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation Assistance Grant, Special Collections staff undertook a major initiative to rehouse the Lewis Hine photographs and digitize their versos. The backs of the photographs bear captions, annotations, and inscriptions by Hine and others employed by the NCLC, testifying to their use in the organization’s publications and promotional campaigns. Together, these materials reveal the many forms of labor documented in Hine’s work and the ways that labor is imprinted upon—and remains legible within—the bodies of his subjects.
Lisa Oppenheim was born in 1975 in New York, New York. She received a BA in art and semiotics from Brown University in 1998 and an MFA in film and video from Bard College in 2001. She attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program for studio art in 2003. Oppenheim’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MUDAM, The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg (2025); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2024), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2017), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2016). In 2014, Oppenheim was the recipient of the AIMIA|AGO Photography Prize from the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Shpilman International Photography Prize from the Israel Museum. Her work is held in the permanent collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, among others. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
