Jacob Riis Notes

*I apologize for the weird way this post probably looks. I don't know how that happened...*


Jacob Riis is a photographer from Denmark. Before he got into photography he was a carpenter and had other small odd jobs until he began working for a news bureau. After a couple of years at the bureau he was hired by the New York Tribune in 1877. He decided that he was  going to use his position to show people what life was like as a poor person. He would argue that the poor are not makers of their fate, rather the victims. (Spartacus) However, when he discovered that a written article didn't have the impact that he wanted he turned to photos. He never studied photography, rather had a problem and photography happened to be the solution.


Riis knew what it was like to not have anywhere to sleep at night and to have bad living conditions. He wanted to help the poor out and make people understand what was going on. He began taking photos of the people and the conditions that they were living in. He was one of the first photographers to use flash powder. Doing so gave him the ability to capture the insides of slums in New York and helped emphasize his point by capturing all of the grit and detail.


Riis showed the public his photos magic lantern shows. As well, many images were printed in some of his books. Whenever people viewed Riis photos, he shocked them. They responded to the photos as if they were a virtual reality. He accomplished his intentions with his photos. He presented the New York slums in a way that made people understand just how horrible some people were off. 


 "He (Riis) not only got the news; he cared about the news. He hated passionately all tyrannies, abuses, miseries, and he fought them. He was a terror to the officials and landlords responsible, as he saw it, for the desperate condition of the tenements where the poor lived. He had exposed them in articles, books, and public speeches, and with results. All the philanthropists in town knew and backed Riis, who was able then, as a reformer and a reporter, too, to force the appointment of a Tenement House Commission that he gently led and fiercely drove to an investigation and a report which - followed up by this terrible reporter-resulted in the wiping out of whole blocks of rookeries, the making of small parks, and the regulation of the tenements." (Masters-of-Photography)




http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAriis.htm
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/R/riis/riis_articles2.html