Lewis Hine was a schoolteacher, a photographer, a muckraker, and, above all, an artist. His work brought about real changes in American child-labor laws, but his pictures remain brilliant because of his amazing eye for subject and composition. In the above classic photo, an Italian-American immigrant woman on Bleecker Street in New York hauls an enormous dry-cleaning box the best she can. To see more great work by Hine, go here.

Hine’s philosophy on photography: “Whether it be a painting or photograph, the picture is a symbol that brings one immediately into close touch with reality. In fact, it is often more effective than the reality would have been, because, in the picture, the non-essential and conflicting interests have been eliminated.

The average person believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify. Of course, you and I know that this unbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken, for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.”