Jacob A. Riis' How the Other Half Lives This book talks about the immigrants in the early 1900’s. The book describes how they live their daily lives in New York City. It helped me a lot on Riis photographs and his writings on to better understand the book and the harsh reality this people lived. This comes to show us that life is not that easy and it will cost us work to succeed. Riis talked about all the immigrant major groups that came to the United States during this time period. Riis was a
It was Jacob Riis that took it upon himself to bring attention to the plight of the poor through documenting “how the other half lives” in photography and journalism. Although Jacob Riis began as a writer, the plight of the poor influenced Riis to learn photography, realizing its potential as a tool in his eventual goal of enacting social change. In this paper I will analyze photographs from How the Other Half Lives, approaching Jacob Riis as an artist and photographer rather
Jacob A. Riis explores the streets of New York, using “muck-racking” to expose just how “the other half lives,” aside from the upbeat, rich, and flapper-girl filled nights so stereotypical to New York City in the 1800s. During this time, immigrants from all over the world flooded to the new-born city, bright-eyed and expecting new opportunities; little did they know, almost all of them will spend their lives in financial struggle, poverty, and crowded, disease-ridden tenements. Jacob A. Riis will photograph
The Reality of Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience
Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant to New York City in the late 1800s, was a photographer that documented the harsh conditions of the working class in the late 19th century. He released a photo-journal book in 1890 entitled How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. He illuminated the dark, cramped quarters and incredibly dirty conditions of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The publication invigorated social activism and pushed for improved housing legislation and standards. Riis’
Many people were not aware of the harsh conditions that the unfortunate were making a living out of. Jacob Riis was one of few folks who thought that the poor had more value to them that what most people thought. He decided he would write a magazine article that would eventually get denied publicity because of the disturbing words and photos within, but that didn’t stop him. When Jacob Riis was young he had a large family, but as he grew older he ended up leaving to New York on his own with very
tenements, and in the middle of one of Americas most important reform which aided in originating the aggressive investigative journalism was Jacob A. Riis. Jacob Riis was born on May 3, 1849, in a small rural Denmark town third oldest out of 15 children to a highly educated school teacher and a homemaker, who was a former governess. Strong-willed and confident Riis was a natural born activist who assisted needy families in his town from a young age. One noticeable moment of his charity was when
Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. He goes to several different parts of the city of New York witnessing first hand the hardships that many immigrants faced when coming to America. His journalism and photographs of the conditions of the tenant housing helped led the way of reformation in the slums of New York. His research opened the eyes of many Americans to the darker
colleague, coworker, or even extended family member that has nicer belongings than we do? Jacob Riis opened our eyes and gave us a true, vivid description and idea of how American families in New York during the late 1800’s lived and worked. This eye opening account shows us today that we should be grateful for what we have and never think that everyone is better than us. Throughout How the Other Half Lives, Riis uses a variety of writing techniques such as word choice, imagery, and . Whenever elementary
In 1890 Jacob Riis, a Danish migrant and New York Times reported introduced the immigrant problem to Americans using photojournalism in his book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. This book provided insight into the harsh lives of the immigrants living in the slums of New York by giving photographic evidence that spoke to the hearts of many Americans. At the time many were unaware of the difficult challenges many immigrants faced and Riis brought up this social issue
brink of reformation but the remnants of a societal barrier between different classes, and races of people is still very prominent. Jacob Riis the Author of “How the Other half lives” approaches this issue in an expose that literally sheds light on the darkness of poverty as well as the tenements the lower class is forced to live and in most cases die in. Riis can be seen as a forerunner of progressivism as he uses photojournalism and his firsthand personal involvement, to pinpoint causes of problems
This chapter of a book was written by Jacob Riis, who was a muckraking journalist. Muckraker was a journalist who pushed for reform by publications the problems of society to the middle and wealthy classes. In this book, Riis made a photographic report about the life of poor people in the tenements of New York. In the beginning, Riis described a raid, which was made by policemen. The object of that raid was the stale-beer dives. He said that the squads sent to make simultaneous control on all tramp’s
The book "How The Other Half Lives" written by Jacob Riis, sheds light on the living conditions in N.Y. city of the poor throughout the Progressive Era in tenement housing. Jacobs publication was meant to show the "other half" or "upper class" how bad it really was. Between 1869 and 1890, tenement housing almost tripled to 37,000 tenements in use. This over population was caused by the uproar of immigrants moving to America to start a new and better life, and almost all of the time starting at the
Jacob Riis and Urban Reform At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States went through a series of major changes known as Industrialization and Urbanization. These developments had a major impact on American life, especially in newly urbanized cities such as New York and Chicago. Americans moved very rapidly from agriculture to machinery, and big businesses boomed, as well as the pockets of a select few. However, along with this change, unprecedented consequences faced thousands of
America while others tend to not agree with that statement. Jacob Riis wrote a book about How the Other Half Lives, and it was basically a look into the lives of the poor people and how they fight for survival and what our government is doing to help those people. Social justice is for all the people to feel safe and secure in the community as well as their homes and if they don’t have that then what do we as a whole have? Jacob Riis exposed the evil of poverty in New York City and its destructive
In the passage “How the Other Half Lives” Jacob Riis makes a very accurate account of what life is like in tenements of New York City. He describes the challenges facing the mostly immigrant population that inhabited the slums and how the societal view was largely inaccurate. His observations however, are slightly marred by his own preconceived notions and prejudice. Riis gives what he believes to be the cause of the squalor and subsequent effect which was the then current state of affairs. He then
Jacob Riis is clearly a trained historian since he was given an education to become a change in the world-- he was a well educated American newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer who, with his book How the Other Half Lives, shocked the conscience of his readers with factual descriptions of slum conditions in New York City. In 1870, Jacob Riis immigrated to the United States without any economic resources and unable to find a source of income to help him. This leads to his perceptions
popular in the late nineteenth century due to the fact of industry on the rise. Urban growth brought on many unsafe living places for many people. Jacob Riis was a photographer who snapped some pictures of the living conditions of some people in the city. He is able to convey in these pictures how people slept or did their laundry or even stayed warm. Riis was able to show the rest of the world, including the higher classes, how the lower classes lived and worked and learned. The expansion of industries
day travelers to America. In the book, How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis explains and delves deeply into how different types of people were treated, for example: men, women, African American people, etc. But in this, he also expresses how the immigrants of this time period were treated. To be quite frank, they were treated horribly back then and modern immigration has greatly improved, but here’s why. In the 1890’s, Riis himself documented the slums and ghettos of New York City. He took incredible
century, reformers used many different tactics to encourage the public to advocate for social reforms. Jacob Riis used photographs of New York City’s slum tenements and its inhabitants to shock people with the truth. His book, How the Other Half Lives, provides a clear picture of the dangers that tenement life poses to middle-class values. Because all life is a product of its environment, Riis used pictures to encourage members of the middle class to see the poor’s struggles before it became a problem