How the Other Half Lives

A pioneer in the field of photojournalism, Jacob Riis (1849-1914) documented the lives of New York City’s impoverished communities and became a leading advocate for tenement reform in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

Born in Denmark, Riis immigrated to the United States in 1870 at the age of 21. His European origins play an important role in How the Other Half Lives. For one, Riis’s writing reveals different kinds of prejudices than one might expect from a native-born American in the late-19th century. He did not come of age in a society that relegated its Black population to slavery or second-class citizenship, so his treatment of New York City’s Black tenants, though couched in the “racial” language of the day, reads as sympathetic. On the other hand, having been born in Northern Europe, Riis expresses attitudes typical to that part of the world. For instance, he extols the virtues of German immigrants in New York City while denigrating the Jewish community. Likewise, Riis understood better than most Americans the events and circumstances in Europe that drove millions of his fellow immigrants to seek better lives elsewhere, and this understanding is revealed in the book through periodic references to European history.

Riis’s most important quality, however, aside from his literary and photojournalistic talents, is his empathy for the people in the tenements. This springs at least in part from Riis’s own experience. Shortly after Riis arrived in the United States, he began working as a carpenter. Times were hard in the 1870s. Riis moved around, going as far west as Pittsburgh in search of work. Back in New York City, he supported himself with odd jobs but at one point found himself destitute and without a home. He finally found a job as an editor with a New York newspaper and later worked as a police reporter for the widely-read New York Tribune. His early experiences with poverty, however, shaped his later efforts on behalf of tenement reform.

Riis’s personal role in the book’s action is substantial. He took nearly all of the photographs. In fact, Riis became famous as much for his use of flash photography as for his work on behalf of New York’s impoverished communities. Furthermore, the book’s middle chapters, which constitute approximately 75-80% of the entire text, feature Riis guiding the reader on a virtual tour of New York City’s tenement districts, including its darkest corners, dingiest cellars, and most dangerous alleys. He pays close attention to locations—downtown, the Mulberry Street “Bend,” etc.—and describes them in vivid detail, but he also broadens the view to address problems common to all tenements, such as alcohol addiction, pauperism, gangs, and crime.

In short, given his background, experience, disposition, and talents, Riis was uniquely qualified among 19th-century New Yorkers to publish this book.