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 about the topic because he also states in the book that the various jobs he occupied were low paying and he experienced poverty in the city of New York as well, yet for a short period of time. Riis mentions the injustice of unsanitary and dangerous In 1890, Riis’ book was an instant success and had an immediate impact since it contained major social criticism, proving to be an eye-opening experience for the reader by highlighting details and facts incorporated in its pages. In a coincidence of good time, flash photography had recently been invented, yet Riis managed to master this new invention and became a pioneer in its use, employing the new technique to capture stark perturbing scenes. “The images he brought to the public’s eye were full of crowded tenements, dangerous slums and poignant street-scene images of a downtrodden underclass that most readers had only previously read about, at best.” Theodore Roosevelt, moved by Riis’s usage of pathos had an intent on improving life in New York, and he famously said to Riis, “I have read your book, and I have come to help” and improvement followed as he ordered affairs in immigrant neighborhoods. Riis brought hidden worlds to light and he continued to write many other books relating to the same The author states that he was fortunate enough to have found the perfect job as a reporter which started his success as an advocate by documenting against the tenement conditions and way of life of the discriminated population. The author said that in his personal opinion “The words he wrote never matched the power of the photos he took beginning in 1888” there was contradictions in words and pictures. .the pictures incorporated in his many articles and books illuminated the context and “helped fuel investigative journalism and the Progressive movement in the early 1900s.” Burgan states that Riis work has an everlasting power worldwide and he admires him as a
Jacob A Riis said “one half of the world does not know how the other half lives” (1) in the introduction of his great book How the Other Half Lives, which was published in 1890. It was simply because the one half did not care how the other half lived. Although unknowing how the other half lives had not been a matter, it brought into relief the gap between people over middle-class and the poor around 1900s in New York City where was the youngest city in the world.
Riis emigrated from Denmark to New York many years prior to his famous report and having ascended in society we can expect Riis to assume if people do not ascend in society they are lazy and clearly not working hard enough. In addition to this Riis had a victorian mindset of view which can explain his beliefs on class and moral values. In Riis’ early time in New York he faced many challenges. Upon arrival he went straight to finding work and learned quickly the game of making sacrifices. He worked strenuous jobs, but was not too focused on starting a life in America because he desired to return home if the appearance of a war became prevalent. This happen in 1864 when Denmark and Prussia declared war on each other, yet Riis remained in America for the time being. He worked small jobs as a carpenter and slowly began searching for reporter jobs only to be quickly dismissed. Unable to find a journalism job Riis settled temporarily with a salesman job. Soon after he applied and received a position as editor of the Long Island New York newspaper thus beginning his journalism career. Out of the blue another position encompassing Riis’ desire to be a journalism emerged and Riis became the editor of New York News. Slowly but surely opportunities became more frequent and Riis eventually became a refutable journalist within New
Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto paints a grim picture of inevitability for the once-exclusive neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Ososfky’s timeframe is set in 1890-1930 and his study is split up into three parts. His analysis is convincing in explaining the social and economic reasons why Harlem became the slum that it is widely infamous for today, but he fails to highlight many of the positive aspects of the enduring neighborhood, and the lack of political analysis in the book is troubling.
History textbooks seem to always focus on the advancements of civilization, often ignoring the humble beginnings in which these achievements derive. How the Other Half Lives by journalist-photographer 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 this poverty in How the Other Half Lives, hoping to bring awareness to the other half of New York.
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.
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 with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.
This piece of auto biographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction
Of the few short stories penned by Hughes, one that stands out the most was his series of weekly writings from the Chicago Defender in the 1940’s about a middle aged black man and a narrator who would speak on a variety of issu...
Words can have a profound, meaningful impact that may alter, shift, and even end lives. In “Create Dangerously”, Edwidge Danticat reveals how words crafted her reality and identity as a woman who lived through a dictatorship. “Create Dangerously” is a nonfiction essay and memoir that focuses on the impact of literature not only in dire times, but in everyday life. Through the use of detail, allusions, and vivid recounting of the past in her writing, Danticat reveals importance and valor of creating art in times where art is a death sentence, and how this belief shaped her identity.
Towards the end of the 19th 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 that undermined society’s ability to function. His approach had on tenement reform and the struggles of life in the tenement houses were detrimental to changing the poor’s way of life Jacob Riis, used a first-person perspective to explore the living conditions of that era. Riis was an immigrant, a photojournalist, a police reporter, and more importantly a social reformer He paints a very clear un-shielded
Coates lived in the ghettos of West Baltimore with his siblings and parents. None of them could go to expensive private schools, they had to attend the public schools that were close by because of conditions back in the past such as poverty and oppression due to their skin color. Coates’ father also had to take charge of their family because he was aware of the fact that opportunities would not come easily to his children due to the way society was arranged. Similarly, a man by the name of Clyde Ross moved to the ghettos of Chicago during the Great Migration. Because he was African-American, he was charged an extremely high price for his home, and to keep up with the payments he “took a second job at the post office and then a third job delivering pizza”. The money Ross made could not continue to go into the making up and decorating of the house or taking the best possible care of his family, the money always ended up with the already rich white home sellers. This was the case for many black people so places such as these turned into the ghettos. The poverty and oppression that Coates had to endure was the exact same poverty and oppression that Ross had to endure. In his essay, “The Case for Reparations”, Coates sites Harvard historian, Walter Johnson, who claims that “slaves were the single largest
An exhibition titled Women of the American Exodus featuring Dorothea Lange’s works will be taking place at an art studio in Nipomo, California where Lange’s famous picture Migrant Mother was taken. Lange is a documentary photographer and used the photographs that she shot to chronicle significant and historical events whose subjects were most often those affected by the Great Depression and poverty (Cathy Ostrom Peters). The pictures are arranged into order of increasing age of the subject in a dimly lit, four-walled room giving us a sense of darkness, and possibly the emotions that the subjects were feeling. Some beautiful works of Lange’s that can be seen are White Angel Bread Line, Daughter of Migrant Tennessee Coal Miner Living in American River Camp near Sacramento, California, and Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle.
The mass media carries with it unparalleled opportunities to impart information, but also opportunities to deceive the public, by misrepresenting an event. While usually thought of as falsifying or stretching facts and figures, manipulation can just as easily be done in the use of photography and images. These manipulations may be even more serious – and subtle – than written manipulations, since they may not be discovered for years, if ever, and can have an indelible and lasting impact on the viewer, as it is often said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the most significant images of Twentieth Century America was the photograph of a migrant mother holding her child. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange, and has remained an enduring symbol of the hardship and struggle faced by many families during the Depression Era. This image was also an example of the manipulation of photography, however, for it used two major forms of manipulation that remain a problem in journalistic photography.
Misery memoirs attract readers because it is a way for them to find their sympathetic self. They have a hard time letting go of the things that make them miserable, which brings them some type of pleasure. For example, sympathy is one form of pleasure. In today’s society, sympathy is a form of virtue. If you complain about being sick, or struggling with a personal problem, there is always a sympathetic ear to listen and offer you advice that makes you feel special and indulge your egotistical need of acknowledgement and attention. Another form of pleasure would be desires and opportunities. This is attaching yourself to a misery now in order that your future desire will occur. This is true for Darin Strauss, the author of Half A Life.
...atly, was undoubtedly ruined by the diet and stress she experienced as a result of forcible removal by welfare workers not dissimilar to myself. Yet, this inescapable dilemma only reinforces my striving to achieve the ideals demonstrated by my profession. These ethics, complex and often at conflict with the reality of welfare are the light that guides my professional practice through the perils of historic white shame.