| Lewis W. Hine Composite Photograph of Child Labourers Made from Cotton-mill Children 1913 Gelatin silver print 12 x 9.5 cm (image) 12.2 x 9.5 cm (sheet) National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada Purchased 1978, No. 22903 LL/63540 Curatorial description (Accessed: 16 December 2015)
The idea that photography could be used as a tool both to understand and to manipulate social behaviour was not new. Late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century photographic experiments were intended to improve efficiency in the labour force, or provide proof of aberrant "types." In 1877, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin's, combined photographic negatives of individuals in an attempt to develop an array of societal types. Here, Lewis Hine sandwiched negatives together in the hope of creating a generic portrait of a female child labourer. Only a small number of his composites exist; two are in the collection of the National Gallery.
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