Richard Fitzgerald (right), 14 yrs old, North Adams, Mass., August 1911. Photo by Lewis Hine.

On right hand is Richard Fitzgerald, 53 Montgomery St., works in twisting room of Eclipse Mills, No. Adams. On left hand, Joseph Adams, 107 Front St., works in twisting room of Eclipse Mills,. Location: North Adams, Massachusetts, August 1911, Lewis Hine.

Same location, October 2009. Part of the mill is now an art gallery.

When I look at the boys in Lewis Hine's nine photographs in North Adams, I think about the fact that in six years, their country will enter WWI, and many of them will no longer be working at the mill. Instead, they will be heading out of the city on troop trains, leaving their lively and mostly French-Canadian neighborhood along the Hoosic River. Some may never return. Those who do will face the Great Depression in another 10 years, when most will struggle to support a wife and young children, the youngest (boys) of which will reach draft age about the time the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Hine shows us Richard Fitzgerald in several pictures, each time for one moment in his life, that's all. Other than the date and the place he was photographed, we know virtually nothing about him. We don't know what he is thinking and what his life has been like up to that time. Richard doesn't know what he is destined to face in adulthood, though he may have already made some assumptions about that.

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