Jacob Riis: Photographer & Citizen

Jacob Riis was an effective muckraker because he took photographs that showed how bad conditions were for those who were in poverty in factories and homes. For example, in one of his photographs, it shows a boy in a glass factory in the 1890's and he is in ragged clothing surrounded by a mess of dust and glass everywhere showing that kids were experiencing bad working conditions in factories. Also, on one of his other photographs there were many people living in the street because they couldn't afford an apartment and even if they could afford an apartment, six or seven people would live in one room with about two beds. Which proves that conditions were bad for those who lived in tenements and worked in factories and the pictures I've described

Infested with experiences and resentment like the rats in the tenements of contemporary New York City, Riis argues that the other half: the good living half; does not care about the struggles of the other half:

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes. This work inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society. Vivid imagery and complex syntax establish a sympathetic tone which Riis uses to expose poverty to the general public and calls upon them to take action and make a difference.

Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.

Rudolph Fisher in the story Miss Cynthie and City of Refuge does a great job by exploiting the different characters of the Great Migration. For example, for immigrants that has just arrived to Harlem Fisher highlights Miss Cynthie and Gillis. For immigrants that are established in Harlem Fisher highlights two characters headed in two different directions; one is David an established artist, second is Uggam a person involved in illegal activities. All of these serve the purpose of reporters for the reader to get a deeper knowledge of the life during the Great Migration.

In “Part Two: The Making of a Ghetto,” Osofsky shifts from a macro-study of Black migration in the United States, to a micro-study of Harlem, a remote neighborhood approximately eight miles from City Hall. He describes how Harlem was once a town sparsely populated by an affluent bunch that wanted to be as far away as possible from downtown. But like most of New York, Harlem’s growth was what Osofsky called “a by-product of the general development of New York City.” He attributes this growth to the annexation of Harlem to New York City and the subsequent developmental projects the city undertook in Harlem, such as filling in marshlands and extending transportation lines to the rural retreat of the aristocrats of New York City.

Jacob Riis deserves a place in history because of the many astonishing actions he did for

In Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe 1880-1930, Mark Wyman argues that many new immigrants that migrated to America from 1880-1930 never intended to make America a permanent residence and many of them returned home to their native countries. He claims that this phenomena is important to the history of American Immigration and is important to the histories of the home land in which the immigrants returned to. In his book, Wyman explores some key ideas such as the reason immigrants decided to voyage to a new land, across the ocean, to what was known as the “land of milk and honey” only to return to their small, and a lot of the time rural village. He also discusses American labor movement and what impact that had on

crime and alcohol consumption, and some simply fell ill to the unsanitary conditions. The harsh reality of these immigrants and the challenges they would have to overcome in order to succeed were made quite prevalent. In his famous book, How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis dug deeper into the lives of the lower class. While analyzing the relationships between tenement residents and their backgrounds, Riis recognized the global representation beyond simply being ‘American’. He wrote, "The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements” (Riis). Riis works to describe the overall makeup of the tenements in the urban areas. He recognizes how

The paper will explore Abelardo Morell’s life, photographic career, and discusses how the Camera falls into his career. Also, this paper will include an art critic review of his artworks. Abelardo Morell is a renowned Cuban-born photographer in the field of Contemporary photography, known for his invention working methods, including the use of a Camera Obscura that represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City. He took the Camera Obscura out of the past and bring it toward the future. This paper hopes to give a reader an understanding of Abelardo Morell and Camera Obscura.

In the 1850 most immigrants were farmers or laborers, most immigrants to the United States derived frequently from middle, or cottager, class. Many of them worked at the cigar-making industry in New York. Their conditions and wages were poor, it would take a Czech about ten years of labor to attain the economic status of the average American laborer. Women were also employed in these factories. The Czechs created the building and loan association, an institution which became of the their most significant contribution to U.S. economic life. Czechs immigrants in the urban setting worked as small businessmen and as skilled and unskilled laborers. During the late 1870’s new immigrants the overwhelming majority were poorly educated, found

Riis wrote about different ethnic groups when he was living in New York. He wrote about greedy Jews, drunken Irish, and sloppy Italians. Riis also wrote with Christian morality. He blamed the faults of the above mentioned people on the poor living conditions that they were in. Like any other photographer or author, Riis’s motive must be figured out. It was already clear that he wanted change for the slums but in his pictures, the authors of the passage describe some pictures having Riis’s Christian morality in play. Riis highlights the needs for stable, wholesome families. The picture of page 191 is an example of a non-wholesome family. The home is supposed to be a resting place but factory work made its way into the home, making the entire family work. Photos like these were examples of Riis’s motives behind his photos. The photo on page 193 called “Room in a tenement flat” showed a family portrait. The room that they were in was very crammed and Riis again shows a family in poor living conditions. Riis also photographed many children, like the ones in “street arabs” on page 195. The photo is heart wrenching and captivates any viewer because of the pitiful place they had to sleep in.

In the late 1800s, America became more attractive to immigrants as they considered its growing economic opportunity. Many families and individuals packed up their belongings and undertook the life-changing journey to the western frontier of America to pursue the “American Dream.” This was the

An outburst in growth of America’s big city population, places of 100,000 people or more jumped from about 6 million to 14 million between 1880 and 1900, cities had become a world of newcomers (551). America evolved into a land of factories, corporate enterprise, and industrial worker and, the surge in immigration supplied their workers. In the latter half of the 19th century, continued industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force. The country's transformation from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation attracted immigrants worldwide. As free land and free labor disappeared and as capitalists dominated the economy, dramatic social, political, and economic

Immigration makes up of the United States. The life of an immigrant faces many struggles. Coming to the United States is a very difficult time for immigrant, especially when English is not their first language. In Oscar Handlin’s essay, Uprooted and Trapped: The One-Way Route to Modernity and Mark Wyman’s Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, both these essays describes the life of immigrants living in America and how they are able to make a decent amount of money to support their families. Handlin’s essay Uprooted and Trapped: The One - Way Route to Modernity explains how unskilled immigrants came to adapt to the American life working in factories to make a living. In the essay, Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, this essay describes the reality of many immigrants migrating to the United States in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Many were living and adjusting to being transnational families. Both these essays show how the influx of immigration and industrialization contributed to the making of the United States. With the support from documents 3 and 7, Thomas O’ Donnell, Immigrant Thomas O’Donnell Laments the Worker’s Plight, 1883 and A Slovenian Boy Remembers Tales of the Golden Country, 1909, these documents will explain the life of an immigrant worker in the United States. Although, the United States was portrayed as the country for a better life and a new beginning, in reality, the United