Jacob Riis is best known for his article-turned-book How the Other Half Lives (1890), which focused on the growing impoverished population of New York City. As a poor Danish immigrant himself, he sought to publicize the conditions in which the poor immigrants of New York City lived. His work led to social reform for public housing.
One of Riis’ major victories was after his 5-column story “Some Things We Drink”, in the August 21, 1891 edition of the New York Evening Sun, in which he exposed the state of New York’s water supply. Riis wrote:
“I took my camera and went up in the watershed photographing my evidence wherever I found it. Populous towns sewered directly into our drinking water. I went to the doctors and asked how many days a vigorous cholera bacillus may live and multiply in running water. About seven, said they. My case was made.”
The story led to the purchase of land around the Croton Watershed, potentially saving New Yorkers from a cholera outbreak (Alland, 1993).
In the mid 1890s, New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt caught wind of Riis’ work and wanted to meet him. In his 1901 article “Reform through Social Work: Some Forces that Tell for Decency in New York City” in McClure’s Magazine, Roosevelt wrote:
“Recently a man, well qualified to pass judgment, alluded to Mr. Jacob A. Riis as “the most useful citizen of New York”. Those fellow citizens of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City.”
Roosevelt coined the phrase “muckraking” to describe the work that Riis and other journalists were doing to expose scandalous information.
To see examples of Riis’ work, visit the New York Times slideshow, “Jacob A. Riis’ New York”.
References:
Alland, Alexander. Jacob A. Riis: Photographer and Citizen. Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1993.)
Photojournalism for Change 