Jacob Riis (1849-1914) was the author of How the Other Half Lives (1890). This study of his life and work includes excerpts from Riis s diary, chronicling romance, poverty, temptation, and, after many false starts, employment as a writer and reformer. In the second half, Yochelson describes how Riis used photography to shock and influence his readers. The authors describe Riis s intellectual education and discuss the influence of How the Other Half Lives on urban history. It shows that Riis argued for charity rather than social justice; but the fact that he understood what it was to be homeless did humanize Riis s work, and that work has continued to inspire reformers. Yochelson focuses on how Riis came to obtain his now famous images, how they were manipulated for publication, and their influence on the young field of photography."

More than 90 years after his death Jacob Riis is still considered a pioneering photographer. He was the first to document the New York slums, publicising in haunting photographs the plight of the urban poor at the height of European immigration to the city. But Riis always maintained that he 'was no good at all as a photographer' and in recent years has been disparaged for racist views and political opportunitism. Here, the complex legacy of Jacob Riis is explored and explained. Illustrated with black and white photographs throughout.

Before publishing his pioneering book How the Other Half Lives—a photojournalistic investigation into the poverty of New York’s tenement houses, home to three quarters of the city’s population—Jacob Riis (1849-1914) spent his first years in the United States as an immigrant and itinerant laborer, barely surviving on his carpentry skills until he landed a job as a muckraking reporter. These early experiences provided Riis with an understanding of what it was like to be poor in the immigrant communities that populated New York’s slums, and it was this empathy that would shine through in his iconic photos. With Rediscovering Jacob Riis, art historian Bonnie Yochelson and historian Daniel Czitrom place Jacob Riis’s images in historical context even as they expose a clear sightline to the present. In the first half of their book, Czitrom explores Riis’s reporting and activism within the gritty specifics of Gilded Age New York: its new immigrants, its political machines, its fiercely competitive journalism, its evangelical reformers, and its labor movement. In delving into Riis’s intellectual education and the lasting impact of How the Other Half Lives, Czitrom shows that though Riis argued for charity, not sociopolitical justice, the empathy that drove his work continues to inspire urban reformers today. In the second half of the book, Yochelson describes for the first time Riis’s photographic practice: his initial reliance on amateur photographers to take the photographs he needed, his own use of the camera, and then his collecting of photographs by professionals, who by 1900 were documenting social reform efforts for government agencies and charities. She argues that while Riis is rightly considered a revolutionary in the history of photography, he was not a photographic artist. Instead, Riis was a writer and lecturer who first harnessed the power of photography to affect social change. As staggering inequality continues to be an urgent political topic, this book, illustrated with nearly seventy of Riis’s photographs, will serve as a stunning reminder of what has changed, and what has not.

This revealing biography of a pioneering photojournalist and social reformer Jacob Riis shows how he brought to light one of the worst social justice issues plaguing New York City in the late 1800s--the tenement housing crisis--using newly invented flash photography. Jacob Riis was familiar with poverty. He did his best to combat it in his hometown of Ribe, Denmark, and he experienced it when he immigrated to the United States in 1870. Jobs for immigrants were hard to get and keep, and Jacob often found himself penniless, sleeping on the streets or in filthy homeless shelters. When he became a journalist, Jacob couldn't stop seeing the poverty in the city around him. He began to photograph overcrowded tenement buildings and their impoverished residents, using newly developed flash powder to illuminate the constantly dark rooms to expose the unacceptable conditions. His photographs inspired the people of New York to take action. Gary Kelley's detailed illustrations perfectly accompany Alexis O'Neill's engaging text in this STEAM title for young readers.

This monograph is dedicated to the career of Esther Bubley, one of America's leading photojournalists. Bubley's mentor was Roy Stryker, for whom she worked at the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C., and at Standard Oil in New York City. Under Stryker, Bubley learned to document the spectacle of modern industry and the lives of ordinary people in a fast-changing world. From the early 1940s to the late 1960s, she also freelanced for national magazines, producing 40 photo-essays for "Life," a dozen more for the "Ladies' Home Journal's" famous series, "How America Lives" and numerous projects for non-profit organizations and major corporations alike. At a time when career options for women were limited, Bubley rose to the top of an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. The 5,000-word essay by photo historian Bonnie Yochelson explains the working life of a photojournalist during the pre-television era when picture magazines dominated the national media. In collaboration with Yochelson, Tracy Schmid, archivist of the Bubley estate, and Jean Bubley, executor of the estate, contribute original research and interviews with Esther's colleagues and contemporaries, highlighting her achievements and accomplishments. The book includes 75 of her finest images as well as magazine layouts, which illustrate how Bubley's photographs were originally seen by millions of Americans. While Bubley's talent was well recognized at the time--her work was shown in three Museum of Modern Art exhibitions--she was not a celebrity and did little to promote herself. Having received far less attention than she deserves, this book aims to introduce a selection of her best work to a wider audience. Bonnie Yochelson is a photographic historian and freelance curator. In 2001, she co-curated "Esther Bubley: American Photo-Journalist," at the UBS/PaineWebber Art Gallery in collaboration with the Bubley archive and estate. She is the author of "Berenice Abbott: Changing New York," "The Complete WPA Project" (1997) and is co-author of "Rediscovering Jacob Riis" (2005).

A portrait of the late-nineteenth-century social reformer draws on previously unexamined diaries and letters to trace his immigration to America, work as a police reporter for the "New York Tribune," and pivotal contributions as a muckraker and progressive.