MOMA has a nice little Jacob Riis collection.
In 1870, when 21-year-old Jacob August Riis immigrated to America from
Denmark on the steamship Iowa,
he rode in steerage with nothing but the
clothes on his back, 40
borrowed dollars in his pocket, and a locket
containing a single hair
from the girl he loved.
Unable to find a steady job, he worked as a
farmhand, ironworker, brick-
layer, carpenter, and salesman, and
experienced the worst aspects of
American urbanism--crime, sickness,
squalor--in the low-rent tenements
and lodging houses that would
eventually inspire the young Danish
immigrant to dedicate himself to
improving living conditions for the city’s
lower-class.
Riis wanted to show the the
world the
dehumanizing dangers of the
immigrant neighborhoods he knew all too
well. He taught himself
photography and began
taking a camera with him on his nightly rounds
through the slums of New York. The recent invention of
flash photography
made it possible to document the dark, over-crowded
tenements, grim
saloons and dangerous slums. Riis’s pioneering use of
flash photography
brought to light even the darkest parts of the city.
Used in articles, books,
and lectures, his striking compositions became
powerful tools for social
reform.
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