if you're in in NYC, might wanna check out da Tenament museum, da irish who got here pretty much lived in filth.
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His pictures of the squalid lives of New York's immigrants made him the most famous photographer of his day - and were credited with bringing reforms which offered some hope to the booming city's poorest residents.
- Photographer Jacob A Riis moved to America from Denmark after his marriage proposal was shot down
- Immigrant suffered in extreme poverty before becoming journalist and documenting squalid conditions
- Though now criticized for bias against ethnicities, Riis showed terrible conditions of Irish, Italian and Eastern European tenement neighborhoods to middle class Americans whose outrage would eventually lead to reforms
- Exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York opens on October 14 and will later travel to Washington DC
- See our full coverage of news, stories and celebrity gossip from New York
Jacob A Riis documented the overflowing tenements of New York's Lower East Side more than 100 years ago, shining a spotlight on how the wave of immigrants from Europe were living in a city which at the same time was the world's economic powerhouse.
He became a friend of the young rising political star Theodore Roosevelt, who called him New York's 'most useful citizen'. But some modern historians claim his photographs were actually freak show pictures which played to stereotypes about immigrants.
Now the Danish-born photographer's work is to be highlighted in a new exhibition in New York, which will then travel to Washington DC.
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A new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York shows the work of Jacob A Riis, who documented the lives of immigrants in New York City tenements at the turn of the last century. Above, a room where residents paid five cents for a spot to sleep on the floor
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Riis, who once suffered under he extreme poverty he later documented, worked as a police reporter for New York papers and would write about the slums he photographed. Above, a picture called Under the Dump at West 47th Street.
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The journalist and photographer was celebrated in his own time, though has since been criticized for promoting stereotypical views of different ethnicities. Above, three children curled up together on a metal grate during a New York winter
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New York's Mulberry street (seen in a photograph called Bandits' Roost) was once part of the city's most notorious slum neighborhoods. It is now popular with tourists and is home to a cluster of Italian restaurants
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Above, a man smokes a pipe in front of a shanty poorly built out of wood
Notes for the retrospective at the Museum of the City of New York, Jacob A Riis: Revealing New York¹s Other Half, say that the reformer used 'flash photography, a nascent technology, for a social purpose – to reveal to New York’s middle and upper classes the squalid living conditions of the poor and to galvanize action on their behalf'.
The exhibition hopes to show attendees the photographer's career in full, which also included newspaper articles and books on the same themes of urban poverty.
Bonnie Yochelson, who is curating the MCNY exhibition, previously wrote a book about Riis, who struck out for America in the late 1800s after the girl he loved rejected his marriage proposal.
He originally worked as a carpenter before losing his job during tough financial times.
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Riis's photography eventually led turn of the century politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt to crack down on the worst lodging house offenders. Above, newsboys at a lodging house clean their faces
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The Dane was credited with bringing light to social problems that many middle class Americans had not seen before. Above, a photograph entitled Peddler Who Slept in the Cellar of 11 Ludlow Street
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Riis was particularly worried about the children growing up in slum conditions, and blamed the violent environment they lived in for possible bad behavior. Above a photograph called Scene on the Mott Street Barracks
For a time he experienced the extreme poverty he would later document for others. His photographs, taken using a tripod camera and articles in now-departed newspapers such as the New York Tribune.
Yochelson told NPR that his most famous book How the Other Half Lives, went to immigrant neighborhoods, but accused him of being guilty of perpetrating a freak show.
'Come see the colorful Italians and the mystifying Chinese,' Yochelson said of his attitudes.
Despite his alleged biases - not a problem which was raised at the time - Riis's magnesium powder flash photography is credited with bringing light, both figuratively and literally, to the desperate situations he saw.
Waves of anti-immigrant sentiment also pulsated through the United States, but the journalist's work soon gained powerful supporters.
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The photographer also looked at the places of work of the immigrant communities, such as the above Bohemian cigarmakers. His work would later be followed up by fellow muckraker Upton Sinclair, who exposed conditions in the meatpacking industry
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Riis used new photography techniques that incorporated magnesium powder to create a large flash. But photography was still a long way from where it is today and the film needed so much time to be properly exposed that movements like this girl's hand would be picked up
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The immigrant's work later gathered powerful supporters such as future president Theodore Roosevelt. Above, a picture taken at a Lower East Side sweatshop on Ludlow Street
Riis was later accompanied on his journeys into the slums by Theodore Roosevelt, then on the New York Board of Police Commissioners.
The future president, who would close the worst lodging house offenders, became friends with the Dane and said that he was 'New York's most useful citizen'.
Riis's work would set the stage for later muckrakers such as The Jungle author Upton Sinclair.
Beyond efforts at reform, the journalist also worked with philanthropists in an effort to assure that any moral citizen had a chance to work for a better life, attributing bad behavior to the environment where people were raised.
He later married his Danish sweetheart after her first husband died and brought her to America before his death in 1914.
The upcoming exhibition on his work, which opens on October 14, will travel to Washington DC and Denmark after its stay in New York.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...hotographer-praise-city-s-useful-citizen.html
This guys a real life Homer J. Simpson. I just think about that Frank Grimes episode and how he was so baffled someone as stupid as Homer got a job as a nuclear safety inspector. Same deal with this bozo
These WS get to crying when they get exposed. Will Cain had a similar breakdown on 1st Take
Great post!
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I've read and heard a great many superlatives describing Trump's racism.
I think some were indentured servants, that's about it. If any were slaves it was probably very few of them and not long
