Witness to the Poor, and a Grand Ship Undone

A scrub woman in 1892, from Rediscovering Jacob Riis.

By Sam Roberts, The New York Times

Every generation needs to rediscover Jacob Riis for itself. Born with a preacher’s passion, building on decades of prodigious research by scholars and fellow reformers and empowered by the emerging potency of photography, Riis transformed himself from a penniless Danish immigrant into the conscience of New York and a confidant of Theodore Roosevelt’s.

In companion essays in Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York (The New Press, $35), Bonnie Yochelson, a former curator at the Museum of the City of New York, and Daniel Czitrom, a history professor at Mount Holyoke College, assess Riis’s immediate and enduring impact without overlooking his weaknesses and prejudices.

“How the Other Half Lives,” the title of the work with which Riis remains most closely associated, was an understatement. The poor he chronicled probably accounted for more like three-quarters of New York’s population. An earlier version of the title was more to the point: "How the Other Half Lives and Dies"….

READ ON at nytimes.com

_____________________

Mike

Comments

[Geoff Smith]

I thought this photo was titled "Police Station Lodger, A Plank for a Bed." I also thought the subject was male. At least, the larger (though much lower contrast) duotone in the 8th printing of Szarkowski's 'Looking at Photographs' seems to suggest a goatee'd individual. Is there some new light being shed on this photo in particular? Just curious. One of my all-time faves.

[Sergey Botvin]

Interesting... Is this hand his own? Or was it careless assistant? Or maybe it was very careful assistant? My guess it was planned that way. Anyway I cannot imagine this photograph without the hand.

Sergey Botvin

[Mike Johnston]

Geoff,
I thought so too, but when I link to TIMES articles I just play it straight--reproduce the title, intro grafs, and captions just as they appear on the Times website. I figure when I'm linking to their content, it's not up to me to editorialize.

I do think they got this one wrong, though. Who knows, maybe the book authors did too, and that's where the Times is taking its lead.

Mike J.

[Hugh Crawford]

Apparently Riis hired a number of amateur members of the photo club to take many of the photos for him, with the advice of police photographers and many of them were taken in total darkness with flash , so that no one could see what the photo was going to be of until it was taken. There is an interesting interview with the authors of the book on WNYC that you can listen to here
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2008/03/03/segments/94396

One of the things that I think is interesting with Riis's work , is that by not caring much about the aesthetic , he created the "look" of concerned documentary photography.

I think the hand is that of the photographer who is holding the flash gun (loaded with flash powder) in his other hand. Note the way the shadow is cast.

I had a photo studio in the ground floor of a tenement on Ludlow street , in the heart of the lower east side in the mid 1980s. It was a former gambling den of some sort unused since the 20s or 30's and had walls and floor that looked just like the photo. You could see the ghosts of Riis's work every where in the neighborhood. Of course it's been pretty much transformed since then, now the neighborhood is all luxury condos , and the nightclubs where my son's band plays.

[Stan B.]

Amazing how so many decades later, Jacob Holdt (yet another Dane also claiming not to be a very good photographer) would continue the documentation of impoverished America.

http://www.american-pictures.com/