Lewis Hine is the father of documentary photography. Often alongside social workers, attorneys and progressive committees working toward reform, Hine used his camera as a tool for social justice. This exhibition showcases his iconic photographs centered around themes of immigration, child labor and the American worker. The rare vintage gelatin silver prints on view attempt to create empathy for the immigrant experience, expose and fight abusive child labor practices, and highlight the dignity of the American worker.

The exhibition is organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions, LLC. All works are from the private collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg.

As a complement to the Lewis Hine exhibition, the works of two social photographers inspired by Hine–Leon Levinstein and Larry Fink–will be on view, demonstrating the ways in which different lenses can be applied to the same genre. Through variances in composition and fundamentals of photography, the selections explore how tools of observation are filtered through artists’ individual perspectives and personalities.

All of the photographs in the exhibition were donated by UD alumna Tami Morachnick, class of 1980, and her husband, Mark Greenberg.

“Experimentation in the printmaking studio has a lot to do with problem solving,” Curlee Raven Holton, founder and emeritus director of the Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) at Lafayette College, explained in a 2014 interview. This exhibition celebrates a gift of prints from the EPI that Holton presented to the University of Delaware. To showcase the EPI’s role as a leading center for innovative experiments in printmaking across a variety of media and techniques, the exhibition puts selections from the EPI gift in conversation with significant works from the University’s extensive permanent collection of African American art.