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 3
Riis hoped to use the pictures to produce what was called a magic lantern show He already had done shows with this early kind of slide projector for more than 10 years The lantern projected the photo on a wall or curtain large enough for many people to see at once and Riis explained the image While he was working on putting a show together Riis and his team were drawing interest from other newspapers In February 1888 two New York papers ran stories about Riis work and printed woodcuts based on his photographs At the time few newspapers illustrated their stories Those that did sometimes used pen drawings The woodcut engravings were copies of the images Riis team members had made with their cameras The technology to allow newspapers to easily print vivid photographs was still years away Some of the best-known photographs associated with Riis were made during his early trips into the slums One of the most famous of the first pictures is called Bandit’s Roost It shows an alley with that name off of Mulberry Street The street formed one border of an area known as Mulberry Bend one of the worst slums in the city It was near the larger Five Points neighborhood which had long been known for its poverty and crime Riis knew Mulberry Bend well because his office was on Mulberry Street and he often explored alleys like Bandit’s Roost Riis said that during his 20 years of reporting on crime the neighborhood had appeared in police reports every week generally in connection with a crime of violence a murder or a stabbing 5 According to city records only two dozen of the hundreds of tenements in the area were in decent condition