Menu Close

What did Jacob Riis discover?

What did Jacob Riis discover?

Riis was among the first in the United States to conceive of photographic images as instruments for social change; he was also among the first to use flash powder to photograph interior views, and his book How the Other Half Lives was one of the earliest to employ halftone reproduction successfully.

What was Jacob Riis point of view?

He believed in the right of boys and girls to play as part of healthy early child development, and as an outlet for energies that could instead be turned to lives of vice or crime. One of Jacob Riis’s triumphs as a reformer was the creation of Mulberry Bend Park where crime-ridden housing had once been.

What did Jacob Riis examine and what was his book?

Jacob Riis was an American newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer. With his book How the Other Half Lives (1890), he shocked the conscience of his readers with factual descriptions of slum conditions in New York City.

What problems did Jacob Riis focus on?

The side walls of the exhibition frame Riis’s call to action on problems he focused on as a reporter—housing, homelessness, public space, immigration, education, crime, public health, and labor. These pressing issues remain at the forefront of many public debates today.

What problems does Jacob Riis see with life in city tenements?

What problems does Jacob Riis see with life in city tenements? Although many cities instituted housing codes and built sanitation facilities, many poor neighborhoods remained crowded and dirty. Epidemics of diseases like typhoid, smallpox, & tuberculosis, were routine.

What problems did Jacob Riis see with life in city tenements?

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.

Why did Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives?

Faced with documenting the life he knew all too well, he used his writing as a means to expose the plight, poverty, and hardships of immigrants. Eventually, he longed to paint a more detailed picture of his firsthand experiences, which he felt he could not properly capture through prose.