Featured on PDR in the collection Lewis Hine’s Composite Photographs of Child Labourers (1913)

Between 1908 and 1911, the photographer and social reformer Lewis Hine travelled the U.S. for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) documenting child labor — in factories, textile mills, canneries, and coal mines — focusing in particular on the Carolina Piedmont. Amongst the hundreds of photographs he made in this time is this unique set of composite photographs of Southern cotton mill workers featured below. Each image was created by purposively rephotographing several workers upon the same photographic plate. The idea of overlaying portraits in this way was not without precedent. The technique was invented in 1880s by Sir Francis Galton who used multiple exposures to create an "average" portrait from many different faces. For Galton, the primary purpose of the method was so as…