By the late 19th century, New York transformed into an urban metropolis aided by the growth of industrialization and immigration. The growth of the city subsequently brought with it increased poverty. Poor conditions in the slums and tenements grew an alarming degree. It was Jacob Riis that took it upon himself to bring attention to the plight of the poor through documenting “how the other half lives” in photography and journalism. Although Jacob Riis began as a writer, the plight of the poor influenced Riis to learn photography, realizing its potential as a tool in his eventual goal of enacting social change. In this paper I will analyze photographs from How the Other Half Lives, approaching Jacob Riis as an artist and photographer rather …show more content…
Riis writes that “abuse is the normal condition of ‘the Bend,’ murder its everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals…their percentage of the total mortality in the block was 68.28” (Riis 52). “Bandit’s Roost” shows a scene from one of the alleys of “the Bend.” But by looking at the photograph, it is not clear to see who the criminals or the tenants are within the frame. There are doubts as to whether or not true criminals would consent to being photographed. There are even women and children within the photo accompanying the men in the alley, while others poke their heads out of their windows to be a part of the photograph. What is interesting is that the alley seems to serve “multiple and sometimes contradictory functions: in the same place the people of “the Bend” socialized and looked after children, they also piled refuse and soot, gathered ash from their fires, and dried their laundry” (Carter 124). Rather than capturing a scene of street thugs or truly menacing criminals, Riis photographed a more ambiguous situation. The audience, through the photograph, is given a peek into another world and another life. In “Bandit’s Roost” Riis “capitalizes on the optical effects of linear perspective, a phenomenon whereby lines running parallel to each other and away from the viewer appear to close in on each other. The linearity that gives the image depth also creates tightness” (Carter 123-124). Framed by the narrow alleyway on both sides and the lines of laundry ascending above, the photograph encloses the space of the alley, encapsulating a world within
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
In Ann Petry’s novel, The Street, the urban setting is exposed as an enemy with all who encounter it. This formidable adversary challenges anyone who wishes to brave the city including Luttie Johnson. Luttie forms a complicated relationship with the setting as she fights its challenges in attempt to find her place within it. Through her use of literary devices, Petry establishes Luttie’s relationship with the urban setting. Using selection of detail and imagery, the urban setting is revealed as the antagonist, and through personification, the conflict between Luttie and the wind is illustrated.
Jacob A Riis said “one half of the world does not know how the other half lives” (1) in the introduction of his great book How the Other Half Lives, which was published in 1890. It was simply because the one half did not care how the other half lived. Although unknowing how the other half lives had not been a matter, it brought into relief the gap between people over middle-class and the poor around 1900s in New York City where was the youngest city in the world.
The novel How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis shocked middle and upper class Americans when it was published in 1890. Riis created a sensation when he revealed to the world, combining detailed written descriptions with graphic photographs, the horrific conditions of New York City’s tenement housing. How the Other Half Lives raises many questions, such as how and why the poor are subjected to such terrible living conditions and how that environment affects them. Riis also reveals his fears and prejudices toward certain ethnic groups as he investigates each tenement in order to find some kind of solution. The miserable surroundings Riis discusses throughout the length of his entire document focus on the tenement.
Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.
This book talks about the immigrants in the early 1900’s. The book describes how they live their daily lives in New York City. It helped me a lot on Riis photographs and his writings on to better understand the book and the harsh reality this people lived. This comes to show us that life is not that easy and it will cost us work to succeed.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
As the camera cuts away from the room where Xiao Yun’s mourners grieve in solemn silence, it returns to the skyscraper featured early in the film. The camera tilts gently upward, directing its gaze higher and higher as more of the skyscraper comes into view. The film, its exposure of proletarian suffering complete, arises from the slums and returns its gaze to the higher levels of society – to the bourgeois audience itself. Street Angel has explored the hardships of proletarian life with contagious sympathy, melodramatically criticizing the capitalism that defined 1930s Shanghai.
In 1890 Jacob Riis, a Danish migrant and New York Times reported introduced the immigrant problem to Americans using photojournalism in his book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. This book provided insight into the harsh lives of the immigrants living in the slums of New York by giving photographic evidence that spoke to the hearts of many Americans. At the time many were unaware of the difficult challenges many immigrants faced and Riis brought up this social issue. Riis himself however has some bias and delineates these people into groups of the “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor”. Despite his muckraking skills and attempts to reveal the hostile conditions of immigrants Riis has some racial prejudices
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict themselves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified by the character of the prostitute.
History textbooks seem to always focus on the advancements of civilization, often ignoring the humble beginnings in which these achievements derive. How the Other Half Lives by journalist-photographer Jacob A. Riis explores the streets of New York, using “muck-racking” to expose just how “the other half lives,” aside from the upbeat, rich, and flapper-girl filled nights so stereotypical to New York City in the 1800s. During this time, immigrants from all over the world flooded to the new-born city, bright-eyed and expecting new opportunities; little did they know, almost all of them will spend their lives in financial struggle, poverty, and crowded, disease-ridden tenements. Jacob A. Riis will photograph this poverty in How the Other Half Lives, hoping to bring awareness to the other half of New York.
“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” (Albert Einstein). “Flavio’s Home,” written by Gordon Parks, can be considered one of Parks’ most memorable photography works. Parks’, enduring much hardship of his own as a teenager, turned his struggles around and used it as inspiration for others. His article tells of a twelve-year old boy and his family, stricken by poverty. Through an acutely informative and subtly persuasive article, Parks adequately uses pathos, diction, syntax, and imagery to tell his readers about why and how poverty “is the most savage of all human afflictions.” Speaking to his Life Magazine readers, Parks’ purpose for writing this article is to first
The repetition of the word "blind" introduces the theme of light and darkness. The streets of Dublin are described as "being blind"(2236) suggesting they do not lead anywhere. The houses are personified as being sombre and having "brown imperturbable faces"(2236), creating the shift from a literal setting to a state of mind. The streets remain silent until the boys are set free from school (2236), comparing the school to a prison: mundane and repetitive, and comparing their departure from school to a type of liberation for the children.... ...
Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.