Jacob Riis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Riis

Jacob August Riis was born on May 3, 1849 (Ribe, Denmark) and died on May 26, 1914 (Barre, Massachusetts, U.S.A.. Riis was a Danish American social reformer, a “muckraking” journalist, and a social documentary photographer. Riis tried to use his talents to help the impoverished in New York City. The impoverished New Yorkers were the main subject of Riis's writings and photographs.

Jacob Riis has a book called “How the Other Half Lives”. In 1890 it was an early publication of photojournalism. He documented the hard living situations in the slums of New York City in the 1880's. During the 1890's many upper class and middle class people were unaware of the dangerous conditions in the slums among poor immigrants. Riis was an immigrant himself, and he originally had trouble finding a job himself when he first came to the states. Eventually he had a successful career as a police reporter. Riis believed the more people were aware of these conditions the more motivated they would be to help and hopefully change the situation. In 1889 Riis wrote a magazine article on the topic. The pictures and details were so graphic that the city's rich newspaper owners refused to publish it. The article soon showed to be popular. Riis then spent a year turning it into his book. Soon after its publication New York started to call it a “powerful book”.