Jacob Riis Social Reform Movement

Taking photographs may seem simple, but being a photographer is more than browsing through the viewfinder and pushing the exposure button. A photographer needs to know how to analyze the scene, speak in words that language cannot, and reach to the souls of people through a picture. During the Great Depression, many photographers captured the scenes of poverty and grief. However, there was only one photographer that truly captured the souls of Americans. According to Roy Stryker, Dorothea Lange "had the most sensitivity and the most rapport with people" (Stryker and Wood 41). Dorothea Lange was a phenomenal photographer that seized the hearts of people during the 1930s and beyond, and greatly affected the times of the Great Depression.

“How was/is the photograph used in the battle between two legacies [within the African American community]—self affirmation, and negation?” What does the director mean when he states that there is a “war of images in the American family album”? Through the Lens Darkly: In the historical documentary, “Through the Lens Darkly”, Thomas Allen Harris examines the impact of photography within the African American community. For Harris and many other African American photographers, photography was a tool of empowerment, enabling them to take photographs that accurately reflected themselves. Photographs, since their creation have always been caught between a battle of realities, propagating both positive and negative reflections of ourselves. While cameras are weapons of empowerment, they also are weapons of falsehood, no more seen than in the negative portrayal of African Americans throughout history.

During 1892, Lewis Hines graduated from high school and worked in an upholstery factory and in the next several years Hine worked several jobs while he was studying stenography, drawing, and sculpture. Hine eventually earned a Master’s degree in education from the University of Chicago. Hine’s first passion was not photography rather it was teaching. His first job was as a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York City. Hine’s had a friend named Frank Manny who was the one that convinced Lewis Hine to become the school photographer at the Ethical Culture School, where he gained technical skills (Hine, 11). Lewis Hine started off with a ten-dollar box camera and soon after set up a dark room at school that lead him to start an after school camera club, where he learned about art photography along the students (Freedman, 9). According to the book “Crusade for the Children,” by 1908 Hine spent several years as an amateur, photographing immigrants, Bowery inhabitants, and Lower Eastside hovel children. Soon after Hine quit teaching because he was interested in portraying the difficulty of the poor (Trattner, 105). Hine spent some time working for The survey magazine but later was hired by the National Child Labor Committee by 1906 Hine started work on a freelance basis (105). According to the book “Kids at work,” by 1908, by the time he left the Ethical Culture School,

To begin with, Lange helped perceive the poor living conditions of the 1900’s through her photo of the migrant mother and three children. For instance, Lange with her photo of the migrant mother helped raise awareness, for the federal government gave the pea pickers camp, where the migrant mother had been distinguished, “twenty thousand pounds of food”. (Starr 48) The photo of the unfortunate pea pickers helped people realize how hopeless they really were. This creating a willingness to help. Showing Lange's photography ability to create empathy through a simple photo. In addition, the mother was so desperate for help that when the picture was taking place, “there she sat in the lean-to-tent” motionless. (Starr 47) The migrant mother was so

Dorothea Lange became a well-known photographer with pictures of the Dust Bowl. According to Garland 2003 her photography obtained government relief for Dust Bowl migrants because she “visually demonstrated the hunger, poverty, hardship, and the plight of the migrants.”

In Chapter 8 of After the Fact in the article, “The Mirror with a Memory” by James West Davidson and Mark Lytle, the authors tell the story of photography and of a man names Jacob Riis. Riis came from Scandinavia as a young man and moved to the United States. Riis firsthand experienced the bad conditions in the heart of the slums of New York. He worked from place to place, doing odd jobs until he found a job as a police reporter for the New York Tribune. Riis lived in a slum called “The Bend.” When he became a reporter, Riis aspired to make people see the awful conditions of “The Bend.” Riis was continuously disappointed because his articles did not receive much attention or sympathy he was looking for. He then vowed to write a book called

Through the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the division between financial classes was great. Big businesses and monopolies ruled the market, making great financial powers such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and more. On the other hand, middle to lower class citizens struggled to pay their bills, lived in houses of fifteen people, worked in mine shafts from the age of twelve, and had miserable lives in the city. The lives of the lower class was captured by Jacob Riis. Jacob Riis was an American journalist most famously known for his photographs of the slums of New York City. He compiled his photograph into a book called, How the Other Side Lives. This set of photographs inspired the social welfare reform effectively through American cities because it brought the issue to the people.

The first thing I will write about is a person, Jacob Riis. A esteemed author of the book “How the other half Lives”, published in the 1890s. Riis was a pioneer in the time when photography was first starting to catch on. In Riis’s photos he took pictures of people who lived in the slums of the major cities and how they lived. He was termed a Muckraker by our late president Theodore Roosevelt, because journalists like him would, as he would say, rake through all the good things and bad on the ground and only report the bad of the world. But Riis was one of the men of his era

As New York photographer James Maher quoted from A World History of Photography, “photographs used in campaigns for social reform not only provided truthful evidence but embodied a commitment to humanistic ideals” (361). Moreover, as shown in the article Documenting the Social Scene, the powerful photography that Hine and Riis have captured of immigrants encapsulate the need for change; furthering the separation of their photojournalism from illustrative and recreational art. From Hine documenting much of the practices of child labor, to Riis exposing the harsh living conditions of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, (Maher) both photographers comply to a code of ethics and sense of journalistic integrity— Riis and Hine showcase the truth behind the photos in a way that attempts to humanize the subjects on film as much as it attempts to engage a moral debate of the situations at hand. In addition, to exemplify the impact of photojournalism, we must consider the perspective of the Gilded Age

Lewis W. Hine an activist and post-modern photographer known for the documentation of Immigrants on Ellis Island that started his career. Exposed the truth of child workers. He also recovered the name of a nation by photographing the atrocity of child labor. His work lend to the passing of the Keating-Owen Child Labor act (1916), or government projects. Lewis W. Hine swung on a special designed basket, above the streets of New York during the construction of the Empire State Building. photojournalism breached the beginning of its golden years, not to illustrate a scene of a place caught in time, but to capture a universal web of opportunity to see America’s living through someone else’s eyes. Lewis W. Hine changed the world through the lens of a modified Glaflex camera, leaving many to witness time in its place for the United States. America’s problems included the great depression, which led many American’s through the darkness of that time (1929-40s). Hine left, was ones world that needed a face to the real complications of social behaviors within our societies, “[Photographers are] the Human Document to keep the present and the future in touch with the past.” (The Great Images of the 20th Century)

For some, a picture is just a beautiful work of art, but for Lewis Hine photography was a way to communicate a message to the world. When Hine was taught the photographic process, it was still being established. This being said, photojournalism was also just evolving as a method to visually communicate information. In an effort to better his photography skills, Hine began to photograph the immigrants of Ellis Island. He was very adamant about social reform and reflected this in his work. Lewis Hine’s captivating photos inspired social change in America for the less fortunate.

Photography was a relatively new technology at the time, and reporters used it to great effect when capturing the different aspects of life as a child laborer. Cameras were more portable and quicker to use than art supplies, and photographs easier to duplicate, so the rapid production and transmission of images meant that more and more depictions of the life of child laborers could enjoy greater awareness. In addition, flash technology meant that photographers could more easily capture images of dimly lit tenements.

One of the most famous child labor reformers was Lewis W. Hine. He was very determined to change unfair social conditions, so he started by taking pictures of immigrants on Ellis Island. He liked to focus more on the people, rather than objects. Lewis Hine became one of the best known photographers. He was hired in 1906 by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) to take photos of children at work to raise awareness for child labor. He had to sneak into dangerous locations, and sometimes even had to be disguised. He talked to child laborers, and asked about their ages and their work, to find out what laws factory owners were breaking. He found that many parents and factory managers were not following even the few laws that existed. During his time at the NCLC, Lewis Hine travelled all over the U.S. making posters with his photographs on them, to persuade people that child labor needed to come to an end. He travelled over 50,000 miles, visiting New York tenements, Colorado farms, Connecticut cranberry fields, Pennsylvania mines, canneries, and other factories. His efforts helped put an end to child labor, and also helped shape the United States into a better country. Hine had a very long career pursuing photographing child laborers until 1918, when he retired from the

A cramped, smoky room filled with people working. A mother holding her child and gathering rags. The sick sleeping on the ground. What do these images have in common? They are all examples of photographs taken by a turn of the 19th century photographer named Jacob August Riis. Riis was not only a photographer, but also a reporter, a writer and a reformer. He used his skills to spur reforms and spur the minds of the public and the government throughout his life.

The photographs were manipulated not in a physical sense, but in the selectivity of what Riis chose to capture. The photographs used in his novel were meant to capture poverty not in a necessarily honest way, but in the way in which Riis viewed it. Therefore his prejudices reflected in the photographs he chose to take; it is stated that he “found most of these immigrants’ customs distasteful and doubted whether they could successfully learn the traditional American virtues.” Therefore, the images he captured displayed the aspects of immigrants’ lifestyles and poverty that fit his personal beliefs and would produce the maximum amount of shock value. The intent of the photograph was of as much importance as the actual content showcased in the