Jacob August Riis

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Jacob August Riis

Jacob August Riis (born May 3, 1849 in Ribe , Denmark , † May 26, 1914 in Barre , Massachusetts ) was a Danish - American journalist and photographer and is considered a pioneer of social documentary photography .

Photograph of a 5 cents sleeping place on Bayard Street
Drawing of the above photograph, from: How the Other Half Lives
Photograph of three children sleeping outdoors

Life

Jacob. A. Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark, the third of fifteen children, worked as a carpenter in Copenhagen and emigrated to the USA in 1870 at the age of 21 . Initially, casual workers, he found a job in 1873 as a journalist for the New York newspaper South Brooklyn News moved, in 1877 as a police reporter for the New York Tribune and worked from 1888 for the New York Evening Sun . The subject of his reports were the East Side slums (Manhattan), which he roamed between two and four in the morning in search of authentic impressions. Despite the terrible grievances he described, the response to his reports was low.

As a police reporter, Jacob Riis was guided in particular by his own experiences as a migrant who had experienced poverty . He wanted to make the fate of the homeless and poor in New York public, whom he saw as a social victim and not as a "creator of their existence".

Riis learned how to use the camera and flash light himself. He hoped to be able to better document the living conditions of his fellow citizens. Due to the flash operated with a magnesium powder mixture , he not only woke the mostly sleeping portrayed, but also risked his eyesight. He is also said to have set two houses on fire. However, thanks to this method, the photographs exude a high level of documentary authenticity . This and Riis' practice of frequently presenting his photographs in public appearances with the “ Laterna Magica ” may have contributed to the fact that they aroused the public in their time and were able to contribute to social reforms.

Riis is considered to be one of the first exponents of covert investigative journalism . So he worked z. B. under a different name in a meat factory. Riis' fame is based on his book publications How the Other Half Lives (1890), an impressive documentation of life in the New York slums, and Children of the Poor (1892). While one book helped improve living conditions in New York tenements, the publication on child poverty was an impetus for school reforms. (In connection with his social documentary reports, he developed a friendly relationship with Theodore Roosevelt , who was New York's police chief from 1895.)

The book How the Other Half Lives was preceded in 1888 by twelve drawings, which the New York Sun published on the basis of Riis' photographs under the title "Flashes from the Slums" about the situation of the homeless.

Because the printing technique was not sufficiently developed in the 1880s, his photographs were reproduced as press drawings. When the book was first published in 1890, there were 17 rather blurred halftone prints of poor technical quality. Another 19 photographs were reproduced as drawings.

This poor technical quality contributed to the fact that Riis was known as one of the early pioneers of social documentary photography long after his death . In 1948 the New York City Museum exhibited new technically perfect enlargements of Riis' glass negatives from its inventory. This eventually resulted in an article in the photo magazine US Camera that same year that made Jacob A. Riis widely known.

Riis' photographs have a direct impact on the viewer and are impressive examples of humanistically intended photography. Later American photographers who also showed social commitment in their work were, for example, Lewis Wickes Hine , Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange .

Works (selection)

gallery

  • How the Other Half Lives

  • Hell's Kitchen and Sebastopol

  • Bandits' Roost (excerpt)

  • Bottle Alley

  • The tramp

literature

  • Bonnie Yochelson: Jacob Riis , Phaidon, Berlin 2001, ISBN 0-7148-9300-5 .
  • Abigail Solomon-Godeau : Who speaks like that? Some questions about documentary photography , in: Herta Wolf (ed.): Discourses of Photography. Photo criticism at the end of the photographic age , Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 53–74.
  • Stein, Sally: Making Connections with the Camera. Photography and Social Mobility in the Career of Jacob Riis , in: Afterimage , Vol. 10, No. 10, May 1983, pp. 9-16.

Web links

Commons : Jacob Riis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tim N. Gidal , Modern Photojournalism. Origin and Evolution, 1910-1933, New York 1973, p. 9.
personal data
SURNAME Riis, Jacob August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Ribe Denmark
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1914
Place of death Barre , Massachusetts