Opening: $180 Hammer Price: $180 SOLD Skylight Gallery 42 March 2018

Cabinet-card format albumen print circa 1885 showing child laborers picking slate out of newly mined coal. With photographer's label verso reading "Views In and Around the Coal Mines / Photographed and Published by / L. Hensel - Hawley, Pa." and subject list with a circle in pencil around "11 - Boys picking slate in a Coal Breaker."   ( Inventory# ie329 )

The children's' grimy faces and uncomfortable postures in image are entirely factual. Given the timeframe, this image was probably not intended to protest their condition, but simply as illustration of a picturesque local industry.

Louis (Loudolph) Hensel began his career as photographer in 1875 and moved to Hawley, Pennsylvania in 1878. A downtown Hawley block fire destroyed most of his existing glass negatives in 1897.

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Cabinet Card

Childhood

USA