Sydney+Latas


 * Historical Investigation **

**The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate** **to what extent the photographs in Jacob Riis’s //How the Other Half Lives// are an accurate portrayal of New York City slum life during the Progressive Era (early 1900s)**. This research will include an analysis of how accurately //How the Other Half Lives// depicts slum living conditions in New York City. This will be done through careful analysis of photographs from How the Other Half Lives and analyses of the book by expert historians to conclude how accurate Riis’s photographs are at depicting New York City slum life in the early 1900s as well as comparisons to other accounts of New York City slum life.
 * A. Plan of the Investigation **

Accurate portrayal
 * B. Summary of Evidence **
 * Riis’s photography more closely mirrored reality because it was artless; what it lacked in aesthetics it gained in documentary detail. How the Other Half Lives is no artistic triumph, but it does reveal a wealth of details that prove most useful in evaluating the accurateness of Riis’s work.
 * No corrupt politician could dismiss How the Other Half Lives’s arguments as opinionated word-paintings spawned by the imagination of an overheated reformer because photography indisputably showed life as it really was.
 * The Lower East Side (where slum conditions were most prevalent) had a greater population density than any neighborhood in the world - 335,000 people to one square mile of the tenth ward and as many as one person per square foot in the worst places. # This was represented in many of Riis’s works, including Five Cents a Spot, which shows lodgers in a crowded Bayard street tenement where lodgers would pay five cents to stay in overcrowded, filthy, disease-ridden tenements. #
 * As manufacturing and commerce crowded into city centers (at the turn of the century), the wealthy and middle classes left cities for developing suburbs. As a result, enterprising realtors either subdivided or replaced the mansions of the rich with tenements where a maximum number of people could be packed into a minimum of space. Crude sanitation transformed streets into breeding grounds for typhus, scarlet fever, cholera, and other epidemic diseases. Few tenement rooms had outside windows; less than ten percent of all buildings had either indoor plumbing or running water.# Space was scarce not only in the homes of the poor, but in public places as well (196). Families tried to maintain a sense of normalcy. (use photos that show this)
 * Literary descriptions of slum conditions faltered in comparison to photographic evidence, as photographs could not be as easily disputed as exaggerations of the truth (180).
 * Even when people posed for Riis's camera, they would communicate certain truths about themselves (194).

Inaccurate portrayal
 * Photography is hardly a simple “mirror of reality.” Riis’s relative inexperience with a camera did not long prevent him from learning how to frame the content to create a powerful image. The photographic details communicate a stirring case for social reform, full of subjective as well as objective content. Riis did not simply want us to see the poor or the slums; he wanted us to see them as he saw them. His view was that of a partisan, not an unbiased observer (197-98).
 * The message of Riis’s photographs were open to the interpretation of his readers and therefore different readers saw different things; people saw what they wanted to see, and not what was necessarily there (181).
 * The camera’s claim to mirroring reality is very deceptive. Merely to sight through the viewfinder reminds us that every photograph creates its own frame, including some objects and excluding others. Every photograph required a selection of evidence (181 atf).
 * No matter how “artless” the photographs of Jacob Riis may be in terms of their aesthetics, to assume they are bias-free seriously underestimates their interpretive content. However primitive a photographer Riis may have been, he still influenced the messages he presented through an appropriate selection of details. Even the most artless photographers make such interpretive choices in every snapshot they take (185-86 atf)
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Riis found it difficult to refrain from letting personal biases leak into his work (190 atf).
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Riis hints targets sympathies through the location of the camera (195 atf).

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">How the Other Half Lives (primary source) <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">How the Other Half Lives was first published in 1890 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, and is written by photojournalist Jacob Riis. I will be focusing on the photographs used in the book, rather than the text, to evaluate to what extent Riis’ photographs were an accurate portrayal of slum life in New York City during the Progressive Era. The purpose of How the Other Half Lives was to expose the horrendous living conditions in New York city slums to the American public with the goal of gaining sympathy and therefore reform for the cause. The book does this through two mediums: text and photography. The value of How the Other Half Lives to my historical investigation is that it is a primary source. I can look to this source to see how accurately Riis’s photographs reflected what other historians describe as New York City living conditions. How the Other Half Lives was intended to gain the sympathy of middle and upper class readers and therefore sometimes over and under exaggerates the actual conditions of New York City slum life. Additionally, Riis was fairly biased in his writing of the book, and therefore How the Other Half Lives loses some credibility as an accurate portrayal of slum life in New York City in the early 1900's.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">C. Evaluation of Sources **

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">After the Fact (secondary source) <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">After the Fact was written by James Davidson (a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida) and historian Mark Lytle. I am specifically using chapter eight, “The Mirror with a Memory.” The purpose of this source is to inform the audience of Jacob Riis and the accurateness of his work. After the Fact both acclaims and criticizes How the Other Half Lives by evaluating the accurateness of his work. The value of this source to my project is that it is very specific in stating to what extent Jacob Riis’ photojournalism accurately reflected New York City living conditions. It also provides a list of sources, that further explores this topic, which I have used to continue my research. While this source is very helpful, it doesn’t provide much information on Riis’ specific works. The chapter also goes into tangents on other photojournalists of the era, as well as a brief history of photograph, which is not useful to my project.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">While Riis's use of photojournalism was revolutionary - and certainly more accurate than other literary works speaking of the same subject as Riis - to say Riis's photographs published in How the Other Half Lives were completely an accurate reflection of slum life in New York City (in the early 1900's) would be incorrect. Riis's photographs were full of biased flaws - every photographer's photographs are. Riis depicted slum life as he saw it, and therefore the reader sees it in the same biased way. He selected his frames, placed his subjects, chose his locations, and included/excluded certain details in order to get the most sympathy for his subjects from the middle and upper classes. It goes without saying that Riis's photographs were ample proof of the struggles of the working poor in New York City slums, but to say that they are an unbiased replication of slum life is anything but the truth.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">D. Analysis **
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">E. Conclusion **


 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">F. List of Sources **
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Hillstrom, Laurie Collier. The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 2010. Print.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Riis, Jacob. How the other half lives : Studies Among the Tenements of New York. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Davidson, James West, and Mark Hamilton Lytle. After the Fact the Art of Historical Detection. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992. Print.