Gelatin silver contact print of an elderly woman holding a child by Lewis Hine.

The American worker was a heroic figure for Hine, who recorded all aspects of working life as the world's richest nation struggled towards prosperity. As the decades passed, the grinding poverty of the sweatshop and factory featured less prominently in his work. Images of strength and pride replaced them.

Hine's photographs of work reflect both negative and positive aspects of immigrant life. The early pictures of tenement dwellers, pit workers and child labour contrast with his later documentary photographs of men and women workers at the docks and factories, powerhouses, machine shops, mills and railway yards.