What was the name of the book of pictures that Jacob Riis published?

What was the name of the book of pictures that Jacob Riis published?

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s.

What does the photo 5 cents a spot demonstrate?

One of Riis’ most famous photos was taken on Bayard Street. It’s called “5 Cents a Spot,” which shows a room full of people bedding down for the night. (A “spot” meant a place on the floor.) The neighborhood is recently gentrified, but this was where Riis campaigned against the housing conditions of the day.

Where is Mullen’s Alley?

32 Cherry Street, New York City
NYC: STREET URCHINS. /nA gang of boys in Mullen’s Alley at 32 Cherry Street, New York City.

Why did Jacob Riis take photos?

While working as a police reporter for the New York Tribune, he did a series of exposés on slum conditions on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which led him to view photography as a way of communicating the need for slum reform to the public.

What was Jacob Riis message?

While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the bad living conditions of poor people by exposing their living conditions to the middle and upper classes.

How did Jacob Riis use photography during the Progressive Era?

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 is Gotham Court?

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York. Cherry Hill is most unfortunately known for its most horrific slum — Gotham Court, “one of the worst tenements along the East River.” It would later be made infamous in Jacob Riis’ renown 1890 blistering survey of How The Other Half Lives.

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