The Survey magazine, June 6, 1914. Jacob A. Riis Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
In his quest for social reform, Jacob A. Riis used the camera as his weapon of choice. He understood that without exposure to the light, what happened in the dark would carry on without an end in sight. His 1890 book How the Other Half Lives: The Tenements of New York was published, and spurned a movement in laws that would forbid the conditions that had flourished in the city until that time: the exploitation of the poor in service of the wealthy. Riis believed it did not have to be like this; with exposure to the truth, change would come. He also believed that the photograph would have the most immediate, graphic, and lasting power to effect people to speak out and fight for those who had been silenced.
“Children’s Playground, Poverty Gap,” photo by Jacob A. Riis Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis, 90.13.4.121.
“Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half”, on view at the Museum of the City of New York, NY, through March 20, 2016, is the first major retrospective of the photographer’s work in over half a century, returning the artist to the site of his seminal 1947 exhibition, “The Battle of the Slum.” Coming full circle, this exhibition unites Riis’ photographs with his archive, which belongs to the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library.
Riis immigrated to the United States in 1870, when he was 21 years old, leaving his native Denmark after being discouraged by the job market and spurned on by the rejection of a marriage proposal. He arrived in New York City long with a larger number of people seeking greater prosperity. Following the Civil War, 24 million people relocated to urban areas,, causing their populations to increase eightfold. By the 1880s, more than 330,000 people lived in a single square mile on the Lower East Side, making it the most densely populated place on earth.
“Five Cents a Spot,” photo by Jacob A. Riis Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis, 90.13.4.158.
The conditions were vile. These were the disease-ridden tenements where people lived 10-15 to a room, the mortality rates skyrocketing accordingly. Riis was hired as a police reporter in 1877 for the New York Tribune, working in an office across the street from police headquarters on Mulberry Street. “Nicknamed ‘Death’s Thoroughfare'”, Riis’s biographer Alexander Alland writes, “It was here, where the street crooks its elbow at the Five Points, that the streets and numerous alleys radiated in all directions, forming the foul core of the New York slums.”
As a police reporter, Riis’s beat was the crime-ridden streets of the city’s slums, with his camera. Necessity being the mother of invention, Riis discovered a new device had been invented using a mixture of chemicals that was fired from a pistol lamp in cartridges. This was the first flash created for photography, and one that Riis immediate adopted.
“Peddler Who Slept in the Cellar of 11 Ludlow Street,” photo by Jacob A. Riis Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis, 90.13.4.207.
“Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half” takes us back to New York City of more than a century ago, to a city that was the inspiration for books like “The Gangs of New York.” It was this city that Riis adopted as his own, using his platform at the newspaper to advocate for better housing, reforms in child labor, and better education. His life’s work stands as a testament to what is possible when one is called to serve others.
“Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York, NY, now through March 20, 2016.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
