The Making of an American - Softcover

Riis, Jacob A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 153014843X ISBN 13: 9781530148431

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

Jacob August Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer.

About this title

About the Author

Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914) was the first reformer to effectively convey to a wide public the unacceptable nature of living conditions endured by the urban poor. His use of the relatively new medium of photography brought an unprecedented power to his message. In 1870 Riis, born in Ribe, Denmark, arrived in New York as a Danish immigrant, one among thousands of the poor, friendless, and unskilled. Like so many, he frequently spent nights in police station lodging houses, the shelters of last resort in late nineteenth-century New York. He soon left the city to work at an assortment of rural jobs, but returned in 1877 to find steady employment as a police reporter for the Tribune (1877–88) and, later, the Evening Sun (1888–99). New York’s police headquarters was then on Mulberry Street, in the heart of the Lower East Side slum district. As Riis’s familiarity with the neighborhood’s squalid living conditions deepened, he began to employ his journalistic skills to convey his revulsion to the public.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 153014843X
• ISBN 13: 9781530148431
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 166