Exposing Hidden Worlds: How Jacob Riis' Photos Became Tools for Social Reform

Exposing Hidden Worlds: How Jacob Riis' Photos Became Tools for Social Reform — page 1
Jacob Riis photo of an Italian immigrant mother and her baby appeared in his groundbreaking work that exposed the pain and suffering of New York City’s poor By the time Riis set out on that fall night in 1887 he had decided that words weren’t enough He wanted to show the brutal reality of the slums using images Drawings wouldn’t work For one thing as Riis readily admitted he couldn’t draw And illustrations he later wrote would not have been evidence of the kind I wanted 2 They would lack the realism and impact of photographs Riis who usually searched for stories at night in buildings without electric lights knew that the cameras available then couldn’t take good pictures of what he wanted to show Then he read about an invention that promised to change that Two German scientists had found that mixing three powdered chemicals and lighting them created a bright flash of light Riis along with amateur photographers in New York City realized what this could mean for photography Henry Piffard one of the other New York photographers tinkered with the mixture to make it safer to use Then he put the chemicals in a cartridge and fired them from a gun That method created a useful flash that was fairly safe Piffard belonged to a photography club along with