Jacob Riis was a Danish immigrant who came to the United States from Denmark. When he came to the United States, he lived in the Lower East Side of New York City in lodging houses where he became familiar with what life was like in poverty. Eventually, Riis got a job as a reporter for the police department and was able to engage himself in the work of photography in the process. He used the job opportunity to show the oblivious public how the other half of America was living in cramped and filthy crime filled neighborhoods. Inspired by New York City’s poor tenement life, Riis started took a camera while he was walking the streets at night and the photos appeared in newspapers and magazines. In 1890, Jacob Riis wrote a book called How the Other
