La naissance de la photographie sociale aux États-Unis à la fin du XIXe siècle est contemporaine d'une place nouvelle accordée à l'enfant dans la structure familiale. Le contraste est grand entre l'enfant riche, sacralisé, à l'innocence louée dans les arts, et l'enfant pauvre, souvent exploité mais représenté de façon surtout pittoresque. Tout en mettant l'enfant pauvre au cœur de leurs préoccupations, les réformateurs font usage de la photographie dans une optique de progrès social et d'intervention où texte et image se révèlent indissociables, qu'il s'agisse de Jacob A. Riis, journaliste et photographe à New York à la fin du XIXe siècle et de l'engagement de Lewis W. Hine dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants avec le National Child Labor Committee, dans un contexte de forte immigration, d'industrialisation et d'urbanisation chaotique, ou des photographes de la Farm Security Administration à la fin des années 30 dans le cadre du New Deal. L'enfant est au centre d'une rhétorique qui s'appuie sur la dimension vivante et vraie de la photographie et sur son pouvoir émotionnel et il contribue à la définition d'un genre photographique : le documentaire social, dont le statut évolue sous l'effet de la diversification des modes de diffusion (presse, conférences, expositions, musée). / Social photography was born in the United States at the end of the 19th century at a time when children were beginning to occupy a new place in the family. There is a stark contrast between the rich children, who tend to be sanctified and whose innocence is praised through art, and the poor children, who are often exploited and depicted in a picturesque way. While putting poor children at the heart of their concerns, the reformers used photography as a means to promote social progress, in such a way that text and image prove to be indissociable. Such is the case with Jacob A. Riis, a journalist and photographer who worked in New York at the end of the 19th century, and Lewis W. Hine, through his commitment to the struggle against child labor with the National Child Labor Committee (at a time marked by high immigration, rapid industrialization, and chaotic urbanization), as well as the photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration at the end of the 1930s within the New Deal. Children are at the heart of a rhetorical system that exploits the vivid and truthful dimensions of photography and its power to move us. They contribute to the emergence of a new genre of photography, social documentary photography, which evolved according to the various ways in which it was disseminated (the press, conferences, exhibitions, and museums). While the cause of children is most often defended and while they maintain their status as subjects in these photographs, the ways in which they are depicted through different means of communication and dissemination sometimes turn them into mere objects.

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