Everything about Jacob Riis totally explained
Jacob August Riis (
May 3,
1849 -
May 26,
1914), a
Danish-
American muckraker journalist,
photographer, and social reformer, was born in
Ribe,
Denmark. He is known for his dedication to using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the less fortunate in
New York City, which was the subject of most of his prolific writings and photographic essays. He helped with the implementation of "model
tenements" in
New York with the help of
humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. As one of the first photographers to use
flash, he's considered a pioneer in
photography.
Early life
Jacob Riis was the third of 15 children born to Niels Riis, schoolteacher and editor of the local Ribe newspaper, and Carolina Riis, a homemaker. Riis was influenced both by his stern father, whose school Riis took delight in disrupting, and by the authors he read, among whom
Charles Dickens and
James Fenimore Cooper were his favorites. At age 11, Riis's younger brother drowned. Riis would be haunted for the rest of his life by the images of his drowning brother and of his mother staring at his brother's empty chair at the dinner table. When Riis was 16, he fell in love with Elisabeth Gortz. To his dismay, Riis was forced to seek work in
Copenhagen as a
carpenter without her.
Journalism career
Riis held various jobs before he accepted a position as a police reporter in
1874 with the
New York Evening Sun newspaper. In
1874, he joined the news bureau of the
Brooklyn News. In
1877 he served as police reporter, this time for the
New York Tribune. During these stints as a police reporter, Riis worked the most crime-ridden and impoverished slums of the city. Through his own experiences in the poor houses, and witnessing the conditions of the poor in the city slums, he decided to make a difference for those who had no voice. Indeed, Gortz did support Riis in his work, and he spent the next 25 years using his artistic medium to advance the concerns of the poor. During this time, Riis wrote another 12 works, including his autobiography
The Making of an American in
1901.
Criticism
Contemporary critics have noted that, despite Riis' sense of
populist justice, he'd a deprecating attitude toward women and people of certain ethnic and racial groups.
Furthermore, Riis' writings, particularly in
How the Other Half Lives, revealed his prejudices against many ethnic groups, cataloguing stereotypes of those with whom he'd less in common ethnically.
Works
Memorials
Jacob Riis Park, located on Rockaway Peninsula in the Gateway National Recreation Area, Queens
Jacob Riis Triangle, located in Richmond Hill, Queens
PS 126M The Jacob August Riis School, a New York City public school in Manhattan's Lower East Side serving kindergarten through grade 8
Jacob Riis Settlement House, a multi-service community based organization, is located in the Queensbridge Houses, in Long Island City, Queens, NY. (External Link
)
Jacob Riis Houses of NYCHA at Avenue D (Manhattan)Further Information
Get more info on 'Jacob Riis'.
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