DAVID RENTON is puzzled by an ambitious attempt to look back on world culture from the future without engaging with or understanding it
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Iconic images from founding father of US social photography
The images in Taschen's new book on Lewis W Hine capture the harsh realities of a country undergoing profound transformation, says JOHN GREEN
11:00 A.M. Monday, May 9th, 1910. Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri, 1910
[Lewis W Hine] 
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BORN in 1874 in a small Wisconsin town, Lewis W Hine was forced to become the family’s breadwinner when his father died. After a series of poorly paid jobs, he attended night classes to educate himself and was able to obtain a degree in pedagogy before going on to study sociology.
At a school for deprived children, he came into contact with the practical and technical aspects of photography and, encouraged to document its activities, began what became a lifelong commitment and passion for revealing the social and working conditions of the labouring classes in the US.
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