Sadie Pfeifer, a Cotton Mill Spinner, Lancaster, South Carolina (1908): Artwork and History

Sadie Pfeifer, a Cotton Mill Spinner, Lancaster, South Carolina (1908) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Lewis Wickes Hine American, 1874–1940.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Photography's ability to record people, places, and things has often made it the prized medium for documenting society, from prison mug shots to medical studies to the horrors of child labor. Working for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine used photography as a means to an end, photographing children at work, from lone newsboys to factories full of young laborers. The resulting images were the visual spark to debates about reforming child labor laws. In this, his most famous photograph, a small girl stands before a cotton loom that seems to stretch the length of the room, dwarfing her in scale.

Object facts

• Title: Sadie Pfeifer, a Cotton Mill Spinner, Lancaster, South Carolina
• Date: 1908
• Artist attribution: Lewis Wickes Hine American, 1874–1940
• Place of origin: United States
• Medium: Gelatin silver print
• Dimensions: Image/paper: 11.6 × 15.3 cm (4 5/8 × 6 1/16 in.)
• Type: Photograph
• Department: Photography and Media
• Reference number: 1959.859

Collection credit

Acquired through exchange with George Eastman House

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.