Lewis Hine’s photograph of boys and girls who worked as “card-room hands” in the Lonsdale Cotton Mills is part of the show “Social Photography Across a Century: The Works of American Master Lewis Hine and Contemporary Artist Scott Lapham.”

Whether they’ve heard of him or not, all Americans owe a debt to Lewis Hine.

In the early decades of the 20th century, Hine’s gritty black-and-white photographs almost singled-handedly exposed one of the nation’s darkest secrets: the widespread use (and frequent abuse) of child workers in high-risk industries such as coal mining, seafood canning and textile manufacturing. It’s thanks to Hine that American children are more likely to complain about too much homework than, say, being mutilated by an industrial spinning machine or beaten by an angry factory boss.

As it happens, about a dozen of Hine’s photographs are currently on display at the Blackstone Valley Visitors Center, in downtown Pawtucket. It’s an appropriate setting. Nearly half the photographs document working conditions at what were once nearby mills and factories, including the Lonsdale Cotton Mills in Lonsdale and the sprawling Atlantic Mills complex in Providence.

Other photographs depict everything from a Providence home for orphaned children to a squalid “workers’ village” in Central Falls to a family cigar-making business on Federal Hill.

But the show, which was organized by the Slater Mill Historic Site, doesn’t stop there. Using a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Slater Mill officials commissioned a contemporary Providence photographer, Scott Lapham, to retrace Hine’s steps around the Ocean State.

The result is a small gem of an exhibit that deftly pursues its then-and-now theme while still paying its respects to one of the founders of American photojournalism. (Too bad the same can’t be said for the show’s title, “Social Photography Across a Century: The Works of American Master Lewis Hine and Contemporary Artist Scott Lapham,” which sounds more stuffy than seductive.)

Taken between 1909 and 1912, Hine’s photographs capture a world that has largely faded from view, at least in the United States. A shot of the Lonsdale Cotton Mills plant, for example, shows two adult workers operating the massive spinning machines that transformed raw threads and yarns into finished fabrics. In the dim light, they look like worker bees tending a vast mechanical hive.

Still, the show’s most poignant shots are those of children. One, taken at the Lonsdale Cotton Mills, features a group of “card room hands” — young boys and girls who helped clean and comb batches of raw cotton, a process known as “carding.” Dressed in denim overalls (boys) and floral-print dresses (girls), they stare back at the camera with the same kind of awkward innocence one finds in school yearbook photos. Incongruously, one of the girls wears a faux-pearl necklace.

Another photograph shows a girl’s sewing class at the Sprague House Settlement, a Providence orphanage. In the foreground, a dozen or so girls dutifully practice their stitches. In the background, the orphanage’s headmistress cradles a new arrival — a newborn baby.

For many viewers, the show’s most shocking photographs will be those depicting the squalid living conditions endured by many mill workers, both young and old.

A view of a workers’ village in Central Falls, for example, shows chickens picking through piles of rotting garbage. Hine, who kept meticulous records, identifies the spot as “Central Falls, Main Street and Bed Bug Alley” — a grimly appropriate description that might have come straight out of Dickens’ Bleak House.

Because Hine kept such good records, Lapham was able to find many of the locations depicted in Hine’s photographs. The Lonsdale mills where Hine spent much of his time, for example, are largely empty today — the victims of global trade and deindustrialization.

But Lapham, who runs the photography and darkroom programs at AS220, also found some more hopeful signs. Among them: Providence’s Sprague House Settlement, which has been transformed into artists’ housing and where, in a delicious bit of déjà vu, several of the building’s current residents continue to hold weekly sewing sessions.

“Social Photography Across a Century: The Works of American Master Lewis Hine and Contemporary Artist Scott Lapham” continues through June 27 at the Slater Mill Gallery at the Visitors Center, 175 Main St., Pawtucket. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. (401) 725-8638.

3 more in Pawtucket

Speaking of artistic transformations, Pawtucket’s own transition from a gritty industrial city to an emerging arts mecca is reflected in a number of exhibits this month.

Two such offerings — “Crossing Borders,” an immigration-themed show organized by the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative, and a display of public art proposals for the city’s Gateway Design Competition — are on view at the Blackstone Valley Visitors Center, at 175 Main St. A third exhibit, featuring works submitted for this year’s Pawtucket Foundation Prize, is located a short distance away, at 245 Main St.

All three exhibits feature some top-notch pieces.

In “Crossing Borders,” look for the work of Pablo Alvarez, a Mexican-born artist whose shape-shifting paintings and photo collages perfectly capture the show’s themes of cultural and emotional dislocation. A pair of playfully macabre marionettes by Dusan Petran — one a leering skeleton, the other a rather suave-looking devil — are also good, although their relation to the show’s border-crossing theme is more obscure. (Perhaps they symbolize death — the ultimate border crossing.)

Architecture fans will want to look for the work of Eric Owen Moss, a prominent California architect who envisions a public park studded with glass columns along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Finalists for the city’s Pawtucket Gateway Design Competition — a major public art project to be installed next to the Visitors Center — are also showing their plans at the center this month.

Newport artist Donald Gerola proposes building one of his trademark kinetic sculptures — this one designed to look like an abstract spinning machine. Providence artists Joshua Enck and Nick Hollibaugh, meanwhile, would install a pair of Cubist-looking sculptures, each loosely based on the mill buildings and smokestacks that are part of the city’s architectural landscape.

Another finalist, Providence artist Kenneth Speiser, also pays his respects to Pawtucket’s industrial past. His proposal calls for a large free-standing metal sculpture shaped like a giant spindle.

Photography dominates this year’s “Pawtucket Foundation Prize Exhibition,” which is installed in a vacant office building just up the street from the Visitors Center. Highlights include Paul Clancy’s wonderfully evocative shot of the former Providence Public Safety Complex in mid-demolition; Paul Lavallee’s electric color study Blue Couch Green Wall, and Millee Tibbs’ Untitled (from the Terror Series), a haunting study of trees at night, which won the show’s $4,000 first prize.

Non-photographic highlights include works by painters Agustin Patino and Gretchen Dow Simpson, mixed-media artists Anna Jane Kocon and Rebecca Siermering, and Providence-based wire-master C.W. Roelle.

“Crossing Borders” ends today while proposals for the Pawtucket Gateway Design Competition remain on display through the end of the month, both at the Blackstone Valley Visitors Center. “The Pawtucket Foundation Prize Exhibition” continues through June 28. Hours: Fri. noon-7 p.m. and Sat. 10-4.

bvansicl@projo.com