Giving Voice
Abstract
This paper examines the work of three documentary photographers, each of whom employed
their cameras in an effort to improve the lives of children. I compare Lewis Hine’s
child labor project in the early 20th Century with more modern photographic efforts
to give voice to children by Wendy Ewald and Zana Briski. I explore how these artists
used photography as an activist tool to enact legal, educational and personal change
in their subjects’ lives. By analyzing the traditional roles of documentary photographers
and how those roles evolved between Hine’s era and today, I examine how these particular
artists helped to push, or break through, the boundaries separating artist from subject.
Finally, I analyze critiques of documentary activism and how changing attitudes towards
the concept of “other” influenced the direction of Ewald and Briski’s work.
Type
Master's thesisDepartment
Graduate Liberal StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9710Citation
Hanes, Michelle (2015). Giving Voice. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9710.Collections
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