Jacob A. Riis, New York, approx 1890. . Jacob Riis/Museum of the City of New York/Getty Images. His book, How the Other Half Lives (1890),stimulated the first significant New York legislation to curb poor conditions in tenement housing. In the late 19thcentury, progressive journalist Jacob Riis photographed urban life in order to build support for social reform. It includes a short section of Jacob Riis's "How The Other Half Lives." In the source, Jacob Riis . Twelve-Year-Old Boy Pulling Threads in a Sweat Shop. Riis, whose father was a schoolteacher, was one of 15 . Jacob Riis, who immigrated to the United States in 1870, worked as a police reporter who focused largely on uncovering the conditions of these tenement slums.However, his leadership and legacy in . Mulberry Street. Only four of them lived passed 20 years, one of which was Jacob. Mulberry Bend (ca. More than just writing about it, Jacob A. Riis actively sought to make changes happen locally, advocating for efforts to build new parks, playgrounds and settlement houses for poor residents. Social reform, journalism, photography. Want to advertise with us? His writings also caused investigations into unsafe tenement conditions. For the sequel to How the Other Half Lives, Riis focused on the plight of immigrant children and efforts to aid them.Working with a friend from the Health Department, Riis filled The Children of the Poor (1892) with statistical information about public health . His innovative use of flashlight photography to document and portray the squalid living conditions, homeless children and filthy alleyways of New Yorks tenements was revolutionary, showing the nightmarish conditions to an otherwise blind public. Tragically, many of Jacobs brothers and sisters died at a young age from accidents and disease, the latter being linked to unclean drinking water and tuberculosis. Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives Essay In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. Submit your address to receive email notifications about news and activities from NOMA. More recently still Bone Alley and Kerosene Row were wiped out. $2.50. Jacob Riis was a social reformer who used photography to raise awareness for urban poverty. Circa 1889. His photographs, which were taken from a low angle, became known as "The Muckrakers." Reference: jacob riis photographs analysis. The success of his first book and new found social status launched him into a career of social reform. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. By the late 1880s, Riis had begun photographing the interiors and exteriors of New York slums with aflash lamp. I Scrubs. Image: 7 3/4 x 9 11/16 in. As a result, photographs used in campaigns for social reform not only provided truthful evidence but embodied a commitment to humanistic ideals. Most people in these apartments were poor immigrants who were trying to survive. Such artists as Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange and many others are seen as most influential . Google Apps. I would like to receive the following email newsletter: Learn about our exhibitions, school, events, and more. Riis also wrote descriptions of his subjects that, to some, sound condescending and stereotypical. Riis knew that such a revelation could only be fully achieved through the synthesis of word and image, which makes the analysis of a picture like this onewhich was not published in his How the Other Half Lives (1890)an incomplete exercise. When shes not writing, you can find Kelly wandering around Paris, whether shes leading a tour (as a guide, she has been interviewed by BBC World News America and. "I have read your book, and I have come to help," then-New York Police Commissioners board member Theodore Roosevelt famously told Riis in 1894. After Riis wrote about what they saw in the newspaper, the police force was notably on duty for the rest of Roosevelt's tenure. Jacob Riis' book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime. In the three decades leading up to his arrival, the city's population, driven relentlessly upward by intense immigration, had more than tripled. With his bookHow the Other Half Lives(1890), he shocked theconscienceof his readers with factual descriptions ofslumconditions inNew York City. The New York City to which the poor young Jacob Riis immigrated from Denmark in 1870 was a city booming beyond belief. In fact, when he was appointed to the presidency of the Board of Commissioners of the New York City Police Department, he turned to Riis for help in seeing how the police performed at night. Often shot at night with thenewly-available flash functiona photographic tool that enabled Riis to capture legible photos of dimly lit living conditionsthe photographs presenteda grim peek into life in poverty toan oblivious public. Think you now have a grasp of "how the other half lives"? However, she often showed these buildings in contrast to the older residential neighborhoods in the city, seeming to show where the sweat that created these buildings came from. It was also an important predecessor to muckraking journalism, whichtook shape in the United States after 1900. Today, well over a century later, the themes of immigration, poverty, education and equality are just as relevant. The technology for flash photography was then so crude that photographers occasionally scorched their hands or set their subjects on fire. Your email address will not be published. (American, born Denmark. A shoemaker at work on Broome Street. She seemed to photograph the New York skyscrapers in a way that created the feeling of the stability of the core of the city. Katie, who keeps house in West Forty-ninth Street. Inside a "dive" on Broome Street. His innovative use of magic lantern picture lectures coupled with gifted storytelling and energetic work ethic captured the imagination of his middle-class audience and set in motion long lasting social reform, as well as documentary, investigative photojournalism. Public History, Tolerance, and the Challenge ofJacob Riis Edward T. O'Donnell Through his pioneering use ofphotography and muckraking prose (most especially in How the Other Half Lives, 1890), Jacob Riis earned fame as a humanitarian in the classic Pro- gressive Era mold. Indeed, he directs his work explicitly toward readers who have never been in a tenement and who . Get our updates delivered directly to your inbox! I do not own any of the photographs nor the backing track "Running Blind" by Godmack The canvas bunks pictured here were installed in a Pell Street lodging house known as Happy Jacks Canvas Palace. The problem of the children becomes, in these swarms, to the last degree perplexing. Confined to crowded, disease-ridden neighborhoods filled with ramshackle tenements that might house 12 adults in a room that was 13 feet across, New York's immigrant poor lived a life of struggle but a struggle confined to the slums and thus hidden from the wider public eye. We feel that it is important to face these topics in order to encourage thinking and discussion. 1897. Fax: 504.658.4199, When the reporter and newspaper editor Jacob Riis purchased a camera in 1888, his chief concern was to obtain pictures that would reveal a world that much of New York City tried hard to ignore: the tenement houses, streets, and back alleys that were populated by the poor and largely immigrant communities flocking to the city. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Mar. Revisiting the Other Half of Jacob Riis. . Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives to call attention to the living conditions of more than half of New York City's residents. Documentary photography exploded in the United States during the 1930s with the onset of the Great Depression. Circa 1889-1890. Beginnings and Development. However, Riis himself never claimed a passion in the art and even went as far as to say I am no good at all as a photographer. However, his leadership and legacy in social reform truly began when he started to use photography to reveal the dire conditions inthe most densely populated city in America. In 1888, Riis left the Tribune to work for the Evening Sun, where he began making the photographs that would be reproduced as engravings and halftones in How the Other Half Lives, his celebrated work documenting the living conditions of the poor, which was published to widespread acclaim in 1890. Among Riiss other books were The Children of the Poor (1892), Out of Mulberry Street (1896), The Battle with the Slum (1901), and his autobiography, The Making of an American (1901). Baxter Street New York United States. 1901. Though not the only official to take up the cause that Jacob Riis had brought to light, Roosevelt was especially active in addressing the treatment of the poor. Jacob Riis was a photographer who took photos of the slums of New York City in the early 1900s. Gelatin silver print, printed 1957, 6 3/16 x 4 3/4" (15.7 x 12 cm) See this work in MoMA's Online Collection. For example, after ten years of angry protests and sanitary reform effort came the demolishing of the Mulberry Bend tenement and the creation of a green park in 1895, known today as Columbus Park. The accompanying text describes the differences between the prices of various lodging house accommodations. Bandit's Roost by Jacob Riis Colorized 20170701 square Photograph. He learned carpentry in Denmark before immigrating to the United States at the age of 21. The two young boys occupy the back of a cart that seems to have been recently relieved of its contents, perhaps hay or feed for workhorses in the city. Kelly Richman-Abdou is a Contributing Writer at My Modern Met. Often shot at night with the newly-available flash functiona photographic tool that enabled Riis to capture legible photos of dimly lit living conditionsthe photographs presented a grim peek into life in poverty to an oblivious public. One of the most influential journalists and social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jacob A. Riis documented and helped to improve the living conditions of millions of poor immigrants in New York. Thats why all our lessons and assessments are free. In this role he developed a deep, intimate knowledge of the workings of New Yorks worst tenements, where block after block of apartments housed the millions of working-poor immigrants. How the Other Half Lives An Activity on how Jacob Riis Exposed the Lives of Poverty in America Watch this video as a class: The conditions in the lodging houses were so bad, that Riis vowed to get them closed. A man sorts through trash in a makeshift home under the 47th Street dump. Crowding all the lower wards, wherever business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of New York, hold them at their mercy in the day of mob-rule and wrath., Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 12, Italian Family on Ferry Boat, Leaving Ellis Island, Because social images were meant to persuade, photographers felt it necessary to communicate a belief that slum dwellers were capable of human emotions and that they were being kept from fully realizing their human qualities by their surroundings. In the early 20th century, Hine's photographs of children working in factories were instrumental in getting child labor laws passed. Interpreting the Progressive Era Pictures vs. (262) $2.75. It's little surprise that Roosevelt once said that he was tempted to call Riis "the best American I ever knew.". These cookies are used to collect information about how you interact with our website and allow us to remember you. It is not unusual to find half a hundred in a single tenement. While working as a police reporter for the New York Tribune, he did a series of exposs on slum conditions on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which led him to view photography as a way of communicating the need for slum reform to the public. H ow the Other Half Lives is an 1890 work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis that examines the lives of the poor in New York City's tenements. Words? It also became an important predecessor to the muckraking journalism that took shape in the United States after 1900. Circa 1887-1888. Oct. 1935, Berenice Abbott: Pike and Henry Street. The following assignment is a primary source analysis. First time Ive seen any of them. 1888-1896. 676 Words. With this new government department in place as well as Jacob Riis and his band of citizen reformers pitching in, new construction went up, streets were cleaned, windows were carved into existing buildings, parks and playgrounds were created, substandard homeless shelters were shuttered, and on and on and on. Mirror with a Memory Essay. Roosevelt respected him so much that he reportedly called him the best American I ever knew. As a pioneer of investigative photojournalism, Riis would show others that through photography they can make a change. A new retrospective spotlights the indelible 19th-century photographs of New York slums that set off a reform movement. Perhaps ahead of his time, Jacob Riis turned to public speaking as a way to get his message out when magazine editors weren't interested in his writing, only his photos. As you can see in the photograph, Jacob Riis captured candid photographs of immigrants' living conditions. Featuring never-before-seen photos supplemented by blunt and unsettling descriptions, thetreatise opened New Yorkers'eyesto the harsh realitiesof their city'sslums. By the city government's own broader definition of poverty, nearly one of every two New Yorkers is still struggling to get by today, fully 125 years after Jacob Riis seared the . I have counted as a many as one hundred and thirty-six in two adjoining houses in Crosby Street., We banished the swine that rooted in our streets, and cut forty thousand windows through to dark bed-rooms to let in the light, in a single year., The worst of the rear tenements, which the Tenement House Committee of 1894 called infant slaughter houses, on the showing that they killed one in five of all the babies born in them, were destroyed., the truest charity begins in the home., Tlf. His work, especially in his landmark 1890 book How the Other Half Lives, had an enormous impact on American society. May 1938, Berenice Abbott, Cliff and Ferry Street. Riis became sought after and travelled extensively, giving eye-opening presentations right across the United States. Jacob Riis: Three Urchins Huddling for Warmth in Window Well on NYs Lower East Side, 1889. . Bandit's Roost, at 59 Mulberry Street (Mulberry Bend), was the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of all New York City. Jacob A. Riis arrived in New York in 1870. Jacob Riis. He used flash photography, which was a very new technology at the time. With only $40, a gold locket housing the hair of thegirl he had left behind, and dreams of working as a carpenter, he sought a better life in the United States of America. As an early pioneer of flashlamp photography, he was able to capture the squalid lives of . Unsurprisingly, the city couldn't seamlessly take in so many new residents all at once. "Police Station Lodgers in Elizabeth Street Station." Lewis Hine: Joys and Sorrows of Ellis Island, 1905, Lewis Hine: Italian Family Looking for Lost Baggage, Ellis Island, 1905, Lewis Hine: A Finnish Stowaway Detained at Ellis Island. Circa 1890. If you make a purchase, My Modern Met may earn an affiliate commission. Circa 1887-1890. After the success of his first book, How the Other Half Lives (1890) Riis became a prominent public speaker and figurehead for the social activist as well as for the muckraker journalist. Circa 1888-1898. Starting in the 1880s, Riis ventured into the New York that few were paying attention to and documented its harsh realities for all to see. With the changing industrialization, factories started to incorporate some of the jobs that were formally done by women at their homes. A Danish born journalist and photographer, who exposed the lives of individuals that lived in inhumane conditions, in tenements and New York's slums with his photography. Although Jacob Riis did not have an official sponsor for his photographic work, he clearly had an audience in mind when he recorded . Were committed to providing educators accessible, high-quality teaching tools. Although Jacobs father was a schoolmaster, the family had many children to support over the years. Then, see what life was like inside the slums inhabited by New York's immigrants around the turn of the 20th century. [1] Riis recounted his own remarkable life story in The Making of An American (1901), his second national best-seller. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society of history students. Ph: 504.658.4100 Jacob August Riis, ca. Circa 1888-1890. Jacob Riis, a journalist and documentary photographer, made it his mission to expose the poor quality of life many individuals, especially low-waged workers and immigrants, were experiencing in the slums. 2 Pages. Hine did not look down on his subjects, as many people might have done at the time, but instead photographed them as proud and dignified, and created a wonderful record of the people that were passing into the city at the turn of the century. From his job as a police reporter working for the local newspapers, he developed a deep, intimate knowledge of Manhattans slums where Italians, Czechs, Germans, Irish, Chinese and other ethnic groups were crammed in side by side. Riis came from Scandinavia as a young man and moved to the United States. 'For Riis' words and photos - when placed in their proper context - provide the public historian with an extraordinary opportunity to delve into the complex questions of assimilation, labor exploitation, cultural diversity, social . Jacob August Riis ( REESS; May 3, 1849 - May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. "Womens Lodging Rooms in West 47th Street." Maybe the cart is their charge, and they were responsible for emptying it, or perhaps they climbed into the cart to momentarily escape the cold and wind. You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at, We use MailChimp as our marketing automation platform. These cramped and often unsafe quarters left many vulnerable to rapidly spreading illnesses and disasters like fires. Circa 1888-1898. All gifts are made through Stanford University and are tax-deductible. When the reporter and newspaper editor Jacob Riis purchased a camera in 1888, his chief concern was to obtain pictures that would reveal a world that much of New York City tried hard to ignore: the tenement houses, streets, and back alleys that were populated by the poor and largely immigrant communities flocking to the city. He used flash photography, which was a very new technology at the time. Like the hundreds of thousandsof otherimmigrants who fled to New Yorkin pursuit of a better life, Riis was forced to take up residence in one of the city's notoriously cramped and disease-ridden tenements. But Ribe was not such a charming town in the 1850s. Riis wanted to expose the terrible living conditions on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. One of the first major consistent bodies of work of social photography in New York was in Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York in 1890. Edward T. ODonnell, Pictures vs. Jacob Riis Photographs Still Revealing New York's Other Half. A squatter in the basement on Ludlow Street where he reportedly stayed for four years. Though this didn't earn him a lot of money, it allowed him to meet change makers who could do something about these issues. Hine also dedicated much of his life to photographing child labor and general working conditions in New York and elsewhere in the country. Open Document. Berenice Abbott: Tempo of the City: I; Fifth Avenue and 44th Street.