| by Maurizio Berlincioni Jacob A. Riis, an immigrant of Danish origins who for years had personally suffered the hardships of the recession, arrived in New York in 1877 after having wandered around the state of Pennsylvania for years in search of work. Here he at last found a job as a crime reporter for the Daily Tribune and the Associated Press agency.
Because of his personal struggles with poverty, Riis immediately displayed a great interest for the poor and destitute and a burning desire to reveal to everyone the degradation and misery in which the inhabitants of the Lower East Side of New York were forced to live, victims of the ruthless speculations of the building industry and greed of corrupt politicians.
After having seen a photograph printed for the first time in the Daily Graphic, Riis realised that mere words didn't have sufficient powers of conviction and he decided to turn to photography, confident that the shock generated by the sight of such hard-hitting and raw images would give birth to a movement of opinion capable of inducing politicians and administrators to come up with a positive solution to this terrible problem. The famous book by
Jacob A. Riis | 
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Accompanied in the early years by two camera-enthusiasts (he was still unversed in the techniques of photography) and an official from the Ministry of Health, Riis toured the slums of the metropolis meticulously and lucidly photographing places and inhabitants. He was also gifted with great psychological insight.
Dissatisfied with this way of organising his work he decided to become self-sufficient and purchased an apparatus, a tripod and an updated version of a magnesium lamp (with unusual skill, he was one of the first to use it, but only after having twice set fire to the premises he was photographing, setting fire to his own clothes and running the risk of being blinded by a wrong lamp!).
It was in this period that, leaving the Tribune for the Evening Sun, he eventually found a publisher for his book. This volume, entitled How the Other Half Lives and containing his writings and images, has made him famous. It was published in 1890. Unfortunately at the time of its publication the techniques for reproducing photographs left much to be desired and therefore only 17 of the 35 pictures included were printed with half tones (even these of poor quality) while the others were reproduced using the drawing and engraving technique, losing as a result the immediacy and affinity with reality that had originally characterised them.
In 1882 he published another book called The Children of the Poor, again for Scribner's of New York. It was only in 1947 thanks to the splendid prints fashioned by the photographer Alexander Alland for the Museum of the City of New York that Americans discovered in its entirety the importance and true beauty of Jacob A. Riis' photographic work.
In his History of Photography Beaumont Newhall says about Riis' work: " ... the blinding flash reveals with pitiless detail the sordid interiors, but deals almost tenderly with the faces of those whose lot it was to live within them.
He was always sympatethic to people, whether ha was photographing street Arabs stealing in the street from a handcart, or the inhabitants of the alley known as Bandit's Roost peering unselfconsciously at the camera from doorways and stoops and windows. The importance of these photographs lies in their power not only to inform us, but to move us. They are at once interpretations and records; although they are no longer topical, they contain qualities which will last as long as man is concerned with his brother."
(© 1997 M.Berlincioni)
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