Lodgers in Bayard Street Tenement, Five Cents a Spot is a black and white photograph taken by Danish-American photographer Jacob Riis, in 1889. It was included in his photographic book How the Other Half Lives , published in 1890. [1]
Lodgers in Bayard Street Tenement, Five Cents a Spot is a black and white photograph taken by Danish-American photographer Jacob Riis, in 1889. It was included in his photographic book How the Other Half Lives , published in 1890. [1]
Riis documented the poor conditions of the lower classes of New York in his work. He took several pictures at night accompanying the police in a role that he called "a kind of war correspondent". He used magnesium flash photography, which allowed him to take pictures at night, and often controversially took them without permission of the people he captured on camera. [2]
This photograph shows an overcrowded room of a tenement, with poor conditions of hygiene, and the people of the photograph were taken by surprise. The sanitary police intervened that night because the price of the beds was 5 cents, two cents below the minimum allowed by law. The picture depicts at least six people in very poor conditions and in a very narrow space, with a stove and several belongings visible. They appear sleepy and don't hide their surprise at being awakened at night. Riis himself describes the miserable conditions of the room:
In a room not thirteen feet either way slept twelve men and women, two or three in bunks set in a sort of alcove, the rest on the floor. A kerosene lamp burned dimly in the fearful atmosphere, probably to guide other and later arrivals to their beds, for it was only just past midnight. A baby's fretful wail came from an adjoining hall-room, where, in the semi-darkness, three recumbent figures could be made out. The apartment was one of three in two adjoining buildings we had found, within half an hour, similarly crowded. [3] [4]
Even sometimes with controversial methods, his photographic and journalistic work helped to create legislation that would allow better sanitary life conditions for the poorest classes. [5] [6] [7]
There are prints of this photograph at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, the Museum of the City of New York, the International Center of Photography, in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Jacob August Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist, and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in the United States of America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash.
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How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. The photographs served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle classes. They inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society.
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Thomas Annan (1829–1887) was a Scottish photographer, notable for being the first to record the bad housing conditions of the poor.
Social documentary photography or concerned photography is the recording of what the world looks like, with a social and/or environmental focus. It is a form of documentary photography, with the aim to draw the public's attention to ongoing social issues. It may also refer to a socially critical genre of photography dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people.
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Bandits' Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street is a black and white photograph produced by Danish-American photojournalist and social reformer Jacob Riis in 1888. The photograph was possibly not taken by Riis but instead by one of his assistant photographers, Henry G. Piffard or Richard Hoe Lawrence. It was first published in the photographic book How the Other Half Lives, in 1889, which aimed to document the social conditions of the poorest people of New York.
Street Arabs in the Area of Mulberry Street is a black and white photograph taken by Danish American photographer Jacob Riis, probably in 1890. The designation of street arabs was given back then to homeless children. Riis took several pictures of these children, during the journalistic and photographic work that led to the publication of his landmark book How the Other Half Lives (1890), where they were published with the title of Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters.
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