Jacob Riis In The Late 19th Century

Jacob Riis played a central role in the debate over the causes and consequences of urban problems in the late 19th century. Riis was a photographer who started as a poor immigrant from Denmark. Initially Riis worked low paying jobs until he eventually found his calling in police reports and later photography. As a police reporter, Riis had unique access to the city’s slums. In the evenings, he would accompany law enforcement and members of the health department on raids of the tenements, witnessing the atrocities firsthand. He mainly used subjects in tenements to expose the various aspects of poverty. His photographs encompass entire families rolling cigars in their tenements, men toiling in sweatshops, women sewing while starving in attics
Riis’ How the other Half Lives shined light on the drastic inequity that existed at the time, the suffering of humans, clear ethical problems, aroused guilt, awakened social conscience, and provoked social reform. Moreover, Riis introduced his readers to the actual apartment living by showing the immense stench and vile conditions of the tenements. He unveiled readers to prostitutes, pawnbrokers, thieves, alcoholics, drug addicts and gamblers. On the other hand, however, he also revealed the brevity of the men and women struggling to survive and overcome their financial ineptness. Riis’s work shockingly communicated to the public what the poor experienced through his photographs which aiding in bringing forth necessary social change. His powerful images brought attention to urban conditions, helping to propel a national debate on what working and living conditions should
His work expresses the drastically unjust differences in the lives of those who were comfortably living and those who were struggling for basic necessities and barely getting by. A major theme of Riis’ works was the horrific conditions immigrants lived in. In the 1890s, tenement apartments served as both homes and as garment factories. The piece titled “Knee-Pants at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen—A Ludlow Street Sweater’s Shop” depicts the intersection of home and work life that was typical at the time. The photograph depicts people crowded together making knickers. It is essential to note and consider the age of the subjects as well as their gender, and role. There are young boys working in the photograph and no females. Perhaps this is because the women were solely useful for the upkeep of the household. Each worker would be paid by the piece produced and each had his/her own particular role to fill in the shop which was also a family's home. The work performed in tenements like such throughout the Lower East Side, made New York City the largest producer of clothing in the United States. Riis’ photographs made the sweatshop a central point of controversy between workers, owners, consumers, politicians, and social reformers. The work displays how immigrants assimilated into society by providing work in the garment industry. The photos reveal that urban life was