"The Other Half"

In How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis depicts the life of poor immigrants during the 19th century in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I found the photo journal aspect of his book to be the most compelling. He captured the horrible living situations and illuminated a population that was hidden from the rest of the world. While the style of writing was very information heavy and more journalistic than the Crane and Twain, the numbers did make the lives of the immigrants more real to me:

• "It could not have been very long, for already in 1862, ten years after it was finished, a sanitary official counted 146 cases of sickness in the court, including "all kinds of infectious disease," from small-pox down, and reported that of 138 children born in it in less than three years 61 had died, mostly before they were one year old." 

• "Ask Superintendent Murray, who, as captain of the Oak Street squad, in seven months secured convictions for theft, robbery, and murder aggregating no less than five hundred and thirty years of penal servitude, and he will tell you his opinion that the Fourth Ward, even in the last twenty years, has turned out more criminals than all the rest of the city together."

• "All nine lived in two rooms, one about ten feet square that served as parlor, bedroom, and eating-room, the other a small hall-room made into a kitchen."

I think that Riis wrote an extremely well written introduction. The first paragraph alone captures his audience and explicitly says what he will focus on in his book:  "Long ago it was said that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives." ...There came a time when the discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring what was the matter." I think that sometimes in today's world, the media constantly flashes pictures of the "slums" or 3rd world countries without calling attention to the fact that it is real. To the comfortable, middle-class American all the issues seem so far away. We need another Riis to go into inner cities and capture what is going on now and put it on display the same way that Riis did. 

Here are a couple of his photos that really struck me: