Lewis W. Hine 1874-1940

Other prints of this image:

Lewis Hine, Men at Work: Photographic Studies of Modern Men and Machines (International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, 1977), unpaginated

Freddy Langer, The Empire State Building (New York, 1998), p. 69 (full negative variant)

Karl Steinorth, ed., Lewis Hine: Passionate Journey, Photographs 1905-1937 (International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, 1996), p. 213 (full negative variant)

In the spring of 1930, Lewis Hine began documenting the construction of what would become the world's tallest building at the time, the Empire State Building.  Hired by the Empire State Commission to make advertising and promotional photographs, the 54-year-old Hine gamely and enthusiastically joined the workers on the girders, thousands of feet in the sky.  The hundreds of photographs he produced are still perhaps the most dramatic and compelling record of skyscraper construction in the modern era.  In 1932, a number of these images, including the photograph offered here, were included in the only book of Hine photographs published in the photographer's lifetime, Men at Work.