How the Other Half Lives

Jacob Riis was a Danish born immigrant that arrived to the United States in 1870. As a police reporter, Riis used his interest in tenement life and knowledge of photography to attempt to bring about social change for the impoverished of New York. His crusade against poverty culminated in the publication of his work How the Other Half Lives, in which Riis presents a thorough analysis of the problems faced by the poor of New York as a result of urban expansion, rapid industrialization and large-scale immigration. Despite his clear appointment of blame for the tenements to the wealthy class, Riis' evident biased and, at times racist, views towards his photography subjects shadow his writing throughout How the Other Half Lives, further alienating the poor of New York and perpetuating their state of poverty.…

reporter for the NYPD that he discovered the true suffering. Citizens living in extremely poor conditions. He felt compelled to find a way to expose this to the other prosperous side of America. Later on he took photos and published many book eliciting the images to other fellow Americans. Riis was part of the gilded age era. This meant industrialization was at its peak in America's history. Many ''skilled''workers such as women who sewed were no longer needed because of the implementation of …

There was never a rich baby left out on the streets, only those who came from an extremely poor mother. Most babies come from the East where their mothers were not married and had no name other than their own to bestow upon the baby. In most cases, mothers would only wrap the innocent babies in newspaper. In rare occasions, they were some found in a clean slip and a little message pinned onto their diaper. The messages would be a note for those who picked them up, thanking them and asking them…

The Introduction and the first chapter of the Riis’s book “How the Other Lives”, seem to vividly depict drastic changes in New York City’s demographic structure, which happened during the vast immigration wave of 1880’s. His photograph projections intrigued and shocked the opulent class, since it was not aware of the struggles of those underneath. Riis’s life’s work has only gained in relevance as the time was passing, since overcrowded tenements persisted in modified forms and shapes to this…

The full title of this book is “How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York” and it was first published in 1890. Jacob A. Riis was a journalist and a photographer that focused mainly on the environment of the poor neighborhoods and slums in New York City in the second half of the 19th century. This essay deals with the motives behind Riis’s work and the importance of photographs for achieving his goals. At the beginning it is important to look at the life of Jacob A. Riis…

Jacob A. Riis’s informative book How The Other Half Lives overall summary is the exposing to readers the ignorance and disingenuous conditions endured in New York’s slums. He includes history about the tenements which belonged to the city’s wealthiest families and as industrialization increased it attracted many immigrants in the 19th century and the buildings were divided into overcrowded apartments for arrivals. Additionally, he mentions that cholera epidemics led people to desire reform.…

This source is an excerpt from the book How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis. Jacob Riis was born in Denmark and grew up there. He emigrated to the United States in 1870 at the age of 21. Being like most young men of 21, he had high hopes of the future and excitement about what was to come. He held quite a few odd and undesirable jobs during the first few years in the U.S. These jobs and the way of life he led while looking for his niche in the world, opened Riis ' eyes to the poverty of the…

Riis How the Other Half Lives is constructed of 25 chapters that mainly talk about the problems in faced mainly in New York tenements. The chapters are each focused on a varying topic or of different types of people. Riis focus as a muckraker is to expose the living conditions of those living in the tenements concentrated mainly in lower New York. Most of these tenements are home to a diversity of people that are usually segregated by national origin, ethnicity, or race. Some of the chapters…

How the the other half lives written by Jacob Riis provides a very conflicted but rational scene upon which the development and state of living conditions were on the lower east side in the 19th century. Riis provided photographs of the streets, people, and tenement apartments he encountered, using black and white slides to coincide the text, his powerful images brought public attention to urban conditions giving us a visual understanding of his writing upon how the lower class lived.…

throughout history, there has always been separation between those who are marginalized and down trodden and the upper echelons of society. This reached a climax in the first modern metropolis, New York City. At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States of America was in the process of emerging as an industrial and economic world power. The chance to come to the land of opportunity lead to a massive influx of immigrants, the majority of which were uneducated and poor, that swelled the…