JACOB RIIS
1849-1914
G'day folks,
Welcome to the life and times of a photographer, social reformer and writer. Jacob
Riis was a photographer and writer whose book 'How the Other Half Lives' led to a
revolution in social reform.
Synopsis
Jacob
Riis was born in Denmark in May 1849 and emigrated to the United States in
1870. After a series of odd jobs, he became a police reporter, a job he
enhanced with his natural photographic skills. Led by his interest in New York
City's tenement life and the harsh conditions people living there endured, he
used his camera as a tool to bring about change. With his 1890 book How the
Other Half Lives, Riis put those living conditions on display in a package
that wasn't to be ignored, and his career as a social reformer was launched.
Early Years
Jacob
Riis was born on May 3, 1849, in Ribe, Denmark, and emigrated to the United States
in 1870 on a steamship. All he carried with him was $40 and a locket containing
a hair from a girl he loved. Upon his arrival in New York City, Riis struggled
his way through various jobs—ironworker, farmer, bricklayer, salesman—all jobs
that gave him an up-close look at the less prosperous side of the American
urban environment.
In 1873,
Riis became a police reporter, and he quickly found that his deep dive into New
York’s underbelly was just beginning. His beat was the Lower East Side, a
neighbourhood riddled with crime and poverty. With a little digging, Riis
discovered the depth of the area’s despair well represented in the fact that in
certain tenement buildings the infant death rate was 10 percent.
The Photographer
Riis was
moved by what he saw in the neighborhood, and he taught himself basic
photography and started taking a camera with him when he hit the streets at
night. In a stroke of good timing, flash photography had only recently been
invented, and Riis became a pioneer in its use, employing the new technique to
capture stark indoor and outdoor night scenes. The images he brought to the
public’s eye were full of crowded tenements, dangerous slums and poignant
street scene—images of a downtrodden underclass that most readers had only
previously read about, at best.
How the Other Half Lives
Riis’
unflinching photos appeared in books, newspapers and magazines, and before long
they were used as tools for social reform. In 1890, Riis’ book of social
criticism, How the Other Half Lives, was published, and perusing its
pages proved to be an eye-opening experience for the reader.
The book
presented statistics about New York’s poverty and contained drawings of the
photos from Riis’ unending tour of the city’s worst slums. Riis said that his
motivation for presenting such a dark tableau was “that every man’s experience
ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it, no matter
what that experience may be.”
The
book was an instant success and had an immediate impact. Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt,
intent on improving life in New York, famously say to Riis, “I have read your
book, and I have come to help.” Together Riis and Roosevelt walked around New York,
with Riis showing the future president the deplorable conditions in which so
many people lived. Roosevelt was moved to close the worst of the city’s police
lodging houses, which he described as “simply tramp lodging-houses,” and
demanded that city officials pass the first significant legislation to improve
the state of affairs in immigrant neighborhoods.
Legacy
Now a
legend for his work toward social reform, and for his use of photography to
bring previously hidden worlds to light, Riis went on to write many other
books, among them(1900), The Battle With the Slum (1902), Children of
the Tenements (1903), and autobiography, The Making of an American
(1901).
Riis died on his Massachusetts farm on May 26, 1914.
Clancy's comment: What an interesting man. I've seen many of his photographs and admire them. I'm sure he was ahead of his time as a photographer and social reformer. Good for him.
I'm ...
R I P
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