Every time he crouched, crawled, and clawed his way throughthe dank tenements of late 19
th
-century New York City, Jacob Riis waswaging war.
Using
Blitzlichtpulver
(flashlight powder) as a weapon inhis “battle with the slum,” Riis was able to convincingly capture andphotographically spread the plagues of darkness, scourge, and povertythat attacked New York City’s most vulnerable tenants.
For Riis, itwas far too easy for financially secure 19
th
-century Americans tocompartmentalize and not openly admit that by capitalizing on thelives and pocketbooks of struggling immigrants and native residents,they themselves were actually no different than a person who slowlytortures and then kills.
As someone who had transitioned from poorimmigrant to comfortable capitalist himself, Riis was personallyfrustrated by America’s “posed” refusal to admit that its economicprogress was paid for using the blood of the poor.
Throughout his journalistic battle for the dissemination of social truth, Jacob Riis letsearing tenement images cut through his oft-overlooked statistics and
1
Riis,
How the Other Half Lives
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996), p. 24. “Riis succeeded in capturingthe look of action in his battle with the slum. Describing himself as “a kind of war correspondent” engagedin “campaigns,” “raids,” “battles,” “invasions,” and “wars” on several “fronts,” Riis took advantage of several new “weapons” to shoot and capture what he believed to be American civilization’s enemy. Thecombination of flashlight powder, detective camera, and gelatin dry plate provided Riis with the tools heneeded to uncover and record a dangerous world rarely seen, in a manner never imagined.”
2
Riis, p. 3.
3
Riis, p. 237.
4
Riis, p. 11-12. “Moving from poverty-stricken immigrant to middle-class American, Jacob Riis’stransformation mirrored the nation’s.” Because Riis identified himself as an individual manifestation of America’s economic transformation, he took it quite personally when some population cohorts were livingin conditions which depleted collective morality. Consequently, Riis hoped to reveal the true state of America through his writings and photographs so that the nation could work together to transform thesocial conditions like it had transformed the economy.
1
facts like bullets that attacked the complacent sensibilities of middleclass America.As a new member of the American middle class, Riis continued tobe influenced by his previous experience with poverty-driven violenceand degradation in America even though his loyalties remained middleclass. Fearing that the “deleterious influence of the slumenvironment” would undermine national morality if it existedunopposed, Riis felt called to photograph slum debasement so as togalvanize other middle class members about tenement reform.
Having himself been struck by the stark visual contrast between the“low, old-looking houses in front and the towering tenements in theback-yards,” Riis understood the power of images.
They introducedthe human element. It cannot be overlooked that every, singlephotograph Riis selected for
How the Other Half Lives
included humansubjects. Even his depiction of the “Tramp’s Nest in Ludlow Street”featured a bundled homeless man balled up on the nest floor.
Perhaps Riis’s most striking use of photography as a humanizingand emotionally-charged weapon occurs in the two jarring images of
Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters.
Riis had already described in somany words how the young New York City orphans were “overlookedby the “Society” … [and left to] dirt and the hardships of the street,”
5
Riis, p. 20.
6
Riis, p. 86.
7
Riis, p. 130.
8
Riis, p. 192.
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but it is not until one sees the actual conditions in these two photosthat the hardships of those poor children become emotionallyrelatable. Whereas Riis’s readers could easily skim over his “posed”text, he understood that the sight of rag-clad, young boys, grimacingfrom discomfort and huddled together over heated grates would serveas a shot of reality into the collective gut of all middle class Americans. The faces of the children cannot “pose”; their pain is truthfully evident.Images cannot be deflected; they pierce the deepest hearts.Consequently, Riis incorporated these overtly “un-posed” photographsso as to emotionally draft viewers into the war on the slum.Ironically, Riis’s own war-like prejudices against the poor becomequite evident in his text despite the corresponding, sympatheticphotos. Unafraid of writing about his personal distaste for cohorts likethe poor Irishman and Jew, Riis also captured photographs thatreflected his more compassionate, religiously-inclined side. Forinstance, Riis was consistently demeaning toward those impoverishedsectors that he believed did not take advantage of Americanopportunities as he had done. He even ventured so far as to call theStreet Arabs “weasels … with [their] grimy fist[s] raised againstsociety.”
Alone, this type of textual descriptor would likely havebirthed immense readership resentment toward Street Arab children;however, the close juxtaposition of photos of the Street Arabs cuddled
9
Riis, p. 188.
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