Jacob Riis (1849-1914) COM 241 Photography I. Documentary photos Reflect a humanitarian point of view –Usually focus on people –Capture a way of life.

Jacob Riis (1849-1914)

COM 241

Photography I

Documentary photos

• Reflect a humanitarian point of view– Usually focus on people– Capture a way of life

• Realistic– Meant to represent fact – Accurate and truthful

Jacob Riis

• (pronounced reese)• “America’s first photojournalist”• Born in Denmark, immigrated to U.S.

when he was 21• Lived in one of police-run poor houses

in NYC• Eventually got a job as a crime reporter

for New York Tribune

• Wrote a series of articles on living conditions on Lower East Side of NY– No one took seriously

• Decided to document with photographs

• One of first photographers to use flash

• “How the Other Half Lives” in 1890

• As result of his photos, city closed police-run poor houses

Bottle Alley, Mulberry Road

Jacob RiisBandit's Roost,59 1/2 Mulberry Streetc. 1888

Jacob RiisMullen's Alley, Cherry Hillc. 1888

Old house on a Bleecker Street back lot, between Mercer and Greene Street

Typical tenement fire-escape serving as an extension of the flat: Allen Street

Jersey Street tenements

Home of an Italian Rag Picker on Jersey Street. c. 1888

Police station lodgers, West 47 Street, early 1890s

Men's Lodging Room in the West 47th Street Station c. 1892

Police station lodgers waiting to be let out c. 1892

Police station lodgers, Madison Street

Bunks in a sevent-cent lodging-house, Pell Street

Police station lodgers, West 47 Street, early 1890s

"Knee-pants" at forty-five cents a dozen--a Ludlow Street sweater's shop

Twelve-year-old boy (who had sworn he was sixteen) pulling threads in a sweat shop, about 1889

Bohemian cigarmakers at work in their tenement

Girl and a baby on a doorstep

Fighting tuberculosis on the roof.

Bottle Alley, Mulberry Bend

The man slept in this cellar for four years, about 1890

In poverty Gap, West 28 Street: an English coal-heaver's home

Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters [church corner]

Street Arabs in sleeping quarters [areaway, Mulberry St.]

Getting ready for supper in the newsboys' lodging-house

A flat in the pauper barracks, West 38 St., with all its furniture

A blind beggar stands in the middle of a street and begs for someone to buy one of his pencils.

Police Station Lodger, A Plank for a Bed c. 1890

Street Arabs in night quarters

On the roof of the Barracks