As we continue to celebrate 25 years of Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant we spotlight 2008 EAG Alumni Lisa Oppenheim. For the exhibition Spine, Lisa Oppenheim repurposed photographs from Lewis Hine, a photojournalist from the early 20th century. Hine’s images dwell on the conditions of immigrant and child labor in American mills and factories from that time. Oppenheim appropriated specific works by Hine from the Library of Congress’ photographic archive that depict adolescent textile workers—primarily young women with physically misshapen backs. Hine originally documented these figures to illustrate the damaging effects of textile manufacturing on the spine. Oppenheim both borrows and translates troubling issues of the past into timely metaphors around labor, production, and craft today.
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