Shorpy and Addie

Well, damn, I deserve what I get for mentioning taxes in a lead-in. Let's pretend I didn't do that, okay? It makes me feel kind of useless to spend my time not publishing comments.

More on topic, Jim Nash mentioned that there are some large JPEGs of Lewis Hine pictures at shorpy.com, as indeed there are. Including many which I've never seen before, which is exciting for me.

Those of you who don't visit Shorpy, or have never heard of it, might not know that the site itself is named after the subject of a Lewis Hine photograph:

December 1910. Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars.
(Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.)

Shorpy Higginbotham died in a mining accident, aged 31.

Poking around the Hine photographs on Shorpy, I was interested to see how the site's community dives into researching the pictures and their elements. Consider this one—the commenters have figured out the real name and age of the "newsie," the location of the store, and even the fact that the toilet paper in the window was made by the Waldorf Company, whose employee education program was the ancestor of the still-thriving Waldorf Schools.

That led me naturally enough to the site of Joe Manning, "author, historian and geneologist," whose site I have actually surfed past before, looking for pictures, without realizing its full import. Joe's "Lewis Hine Project" involves tracking down what happened to the subjects of some of Hine's pictures.

February 1910. Addie Card,12 years old, anemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill, Vermont. Girls in mill say she is ten years. She admitted to me she was twelve; that she started during school vacation and would 'stay.' (Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.)

One of Lewis Hine's most famous child-laborer photographs is of Addie Card, an "anemic little spinner" in a Vermont cotton mill. A book author, Elizabeth Winthrop, wrote a novel inspired by the photograph, imagining the life of the girl in the picture, who she named "Grace." But she became curious about the identity of the real person in the photograph, and asked Joe Manning to help her find out more about her.

Joe Manning's account of several months of detective work starts here.

It's not a fast read, but his search certainly succeeded—he was able to track Addie Card through marriages, divorce, a lost child, and all the way to her headstone (she died in 1993). He met a number of her descendants and uncovered several later pictures of her, and one possible earlier one, including a picture of her as an old woman.

Based on Joe's researches, Elizabeth Winthrop wrote a short article for Smithsonian magazine about Addie, which can be found here.

And to think, there are probably similar stories waiting to be uncovered about so many of the pictures on Shorpy...if you've never visited, don't do it when you're in a hurry.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Randall Teasley]

Every time I hear someone mention abolishing child labor laws I suggest that they look at the work of Lewis Hine. Those who don't know or study history are doomed to repeat it.

[Edie Howe]

Mike--
Shorpy.com is one of my favorite websites, and I love the beautiful images there and am the proud owner of one of their prints.

I think my next purchase is going to be this one: http://www.shorpy.com/node/12722

Also, I'm back in Yosemite, waiting for Glacier Pt. to open. Not very likely this week, it's snowing as I type.

[Ben Rosengart]

I was just sad that Google's Muybridge tribute happened while you were on hiatus.

[levonne]

I love the old prints, especially of Addie.

[cfw]

The Library of Congress (loc.gov) has an enoumous number of Hine photographs, all of which are free to download, many of which are in TIFF high mb format. The collection is huge but it's a pleasant way to spend an hour or so.

cfw

[Bob Stothfang]

Be careful with the Shorpy website, it is very addictive and you can sure spend a lot of time there. I speak from experience, I am a sucker for old photographs and Shorpy excels in that department.

I hate to say this Mike, but my Shorpy bookmark is ahead of yours, not by much though.

[Ed Grossman]

What a wonderful site shortly.com is! [He means Shorpy--see below --Ed.] There's a real lesson to be learned in seeing so many great photos made without the help of matrix metering, fast glass, and remotely triggered strobes.

Kudos to Joe Manning as well. Perhaps this whole post should be entitled "A Tribute to Hard Work".

[Bryce Lee]

Shorpy as with T.O.P is must daily read.

Sometimes disturbing, some times not.

[John McMillin]

Shorpy is a wonderful site. It only takes a few minutes there to visit other centuries, but I linger for hours. Their colorizations of vintage prints can be out of this world, and straight into theirs. Then there's a good stock of WWII Kodachromes, but, thankfully, nothing newer.

Did'ya notice, Mike that the photo recommended by Edie was made by a Johnston?

[Roger Overall]

Child labour is one of those topics that no parent can bear to read about without something getting stuck in their throat.

I see in Addie Card my seven-year-old daughter. I cannot imagine her having to work at that age, let alone in such horrendous conditions. It still happens today, of course, around the world.

Hines did his country and its children a remarkable service.

[Ed Grossman]

It's ironic that in my comment praising the low-tech photos on *shorpy.com*, auto-correct on my tablet chose to "fix" the site's name when I clicked send.

Gizmos - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em...

[Crabby Umbo]

Hit Shorpy every morning, everything is at least amusing if not interesting...I try to get the short daily fix, as going back into the files is too time consuming! What I find even more delightful than the classic black & white images are the bloggers own family color transparencies from the near past, it's a symbiotic trip to my early childhood!

[Martin Doonan]

And herein you show the benefits of self-employment in photography rather than having a salaried corporate job: time to browse this interesting stuff. So much new to me here, photographically. So many photographers you highlight that I've never even heard of. really, I just dabble around the edges and wish I had more time to dive deeper (a bit of a pun as I'm on a scuba trip at present).

[Jim Richardson]

Shorpy is one of my morning round of visits. Always a delight, made more so by reflection. When I started in photography (age 10) many of the Shorpy images were only 50 years old. Now those same images are a century old, and all the more precious. Sometimes I try to imagine the world before photography, a different place without these wonderful time windows that now lay on our laps (or laptops.) Shorpy does the heavy lifting of rifling through the endless file cabinets to pull out these images and post them every day.

[Matt Weber]

Great site! Thanks...

[Daniel Fealko]

Shorpy is an addiction of mine too. I have three large prints from Shorpy proudly displayed on the wall next to my computer. It's the only other site besides TOP that I visit daily.

[Brian Small]

Shorpy is a great site but just for reference most of their material comes from the Library of Congress digital collection:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Many of these images can be downloaded as high res tiff.