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Photography © The Estate of Jacob Riis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Riis
Jacob August Riis (1849 - 1914), was a
Danish-American muckraker journalist,
photographer, and social reformer, was born
in Ribe, Denmark. He is known for his
dedication to help the less fortunate in New
York City. As one of the first photographers
to use flash, he is considered a pioneer in
photography.
Jacob Riis was the first of fourteen
children. At age eleven, Riis's younger
brother drowned. Riis would be haunted for
the rest of his life by the images of his
drowning brother and of his mother staring at
his brother's empty chair at the dinner
table. At twelve, Riis amazed all who knew
him when he donated all the money he received
for Christmas to a poor Ribe family, at a
time when money was scarce for anyone.
Riis went to the United States by steamer in
1870, when he was 21, seeking employment as a
carpenter. He arrived during an era of social
turmoil. Large groups of migrants and
immigrants flooded urban areas in the years
following the Civil War seeking prosperity in
a more industrialized environment.
Twenty-four million people moved to urban
centers, causing a population increase of
over 700%.
The demographics of American urban centers
grew significantly more heterogeneous as
immigrant groups arrived in waves, creating
ethnic enclaves often more populous than even
the largest cities in the homelands.
He served as police reporter.
He worked the most crime-ridden and
impoverished slums of the city. Through his
own experiences in the poor houses, and
witnessing the conditions of the poor in the
city slums, he decided to make a difference
for those who had no voice.
He was one of the first Americans to use
flash powder, allowing his documentation of
New York City slums to penetrate the dark of
night, and helping him capture the hardships
faced by the poor and criminal along his
police beats.
His magnum opus How the Other Half Lives was
directly responsible for convincing
then-Commissioner of Police Theodore
Roosevelt to close the police-run poor houses
in which Riis suffered during his first
months as an American. After reading it,
Roosevelt was so deeply moved by Riis's sense
of justice that he met Riis and befriended
him for life, calling him "the best American
I ever knew.
Roosevelt himself coined the term "muckraking
journalism" (A muckraker is a journalist,
author or filmmaker who investigates and
exposes societal issues such as political
corruption, corporate crime, child labor,
conditions in slums and prisons, unsanitary
conditions in food processing plants,
fraudulent claims by manufacturers of patent
medicines and similar topics)
Bandit's Roost by Jacob Riis, 1888, from How
the Other Half Lives. This image is Bandit's
Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the
most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York
City.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/photos/imag
es/riis9.gif
Contemporary critics have noted that, despite
Riis's sense of populist justice, he had a
deprecating attitude towards women and people
of certain ethnic and racial groups.
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/people
_riis.html
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Music -- Come Tenderness by Patrick Cassidy
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Tags : Jacob Riss muckraker photograph black white poverty slum crime society new york Patrick Cassidy |
