What is Jacob Riis trying to capture in his pictures?

What is Jacob Riis trying to capture in his pictures?

Harrowing images of tenements and alleyways where New York’s immigrant communities lived, combined with his evocative storytelling, were intended to engage and inform his audience and exhort them to act. Riis helped set in motion an activist legacy linking photojournalism with reform.

What was the purpose behind the pictures and writing in Jacob Riis book How the Other Half Lives?

The photographs served as a basis for future “muckraking” journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes. They inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today’s society.

How the other half lives summary and analysis?

Publisher’s Summary How the Other Half Lives was a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future muckraking journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle class.

What did Riis’s photographs reveal about New York City?

By the city government’s own broader definition of poverty, nearly one of every two New Yorkers is still struggling to get by today, fully 125 years after Jacob Riis seared the Gilded Age public conscience with crude photographs of the Lower East Side tenements that revealed “How the Other Half Lives.”

Why do you think Jacob Riis titled his collection of images How the Other Half Lives quizlet?

These photographs became an important part of a book he wrote called How The Other Half Lives. The title of Riis’ book reflected the fact that— while many Americans during the Gilded Age were rich, upper middle class and middle class—there were also many Americans who were extremely poor and suffering.

What was the purpose of Jacob Riis’s book How the Other Half Lives?

How the Other Half Lives was a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future muckraking journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle class.

How did Jacob Riis get interested in photography?

Working as a police reporter for the New-York Tribune and unsatisfied with the extent to which he could capture the city’s slums with words, Riis eventually found that photography was the tool he needed. Starting in the 1880s, Riis ventured into the New York that few were paying attention to and documented its harsh realities for all to see.

When did Jacob Riis come to New York?

The New York City to which the poor young Jacob Riis immigrated from Denmark in 1870 was a city booming beyond belief. In the three decades leading up to his arrival, the city’s population, driven relentlessly upward by intense immigration, had more than tripled. Over the next three decades, it would nearly quadruple.

When did Jacob Riis take the portrait of the Tramp?

Museum of the City of New York (084.00.00) The portrait of the tramp, taken by Riis, Lawrence, and Piffard, was among the group of images that Riis was invited to show at the monthly lantern slide meeting of the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York in January 1888.

Where was the dump where Jacob Riis lived?

A young girl, holding a baby, sits in a doorway next to a garbage can. Circa 1890. Jacob Riis/Museum of the City of New York/Getty Images An Italian immigrant man smokes a pipe in his makeshift home under the Rivington Street Dump.