Jacob Riis: photographer immigrant who was shot an unknown half of new York

In 1870, the 21-year-old Jacob Riis emigrated from Denmark in a thriving and growing new York. The young man had $ 40 in his pocket, a gold locket with a lock of his girlfriend, whom he had left, and the dream to work as a carpenter. Like hundreds of thousands of other immigrants, Riis arrived in the United States in search of a better life. However, all he found there is poverty, social inequality and unemployment.

Rees had to live in dark and are riddled with disease of the slums. The photographer lived in extreme poverty, not being able to get a regular job. He was interrupted by occasional jobs, was an assistant on the farm and work the metal until he finally got a job as a trainee journalist in the New York News Association.

Portrait Of Jacob Riis.

Soon, Riis became a reporter in the police and again confronted with the miserable slum-dwellers.

The young man began writing to document the plight of poor immigrants.

When and words was not enough, Reese resorted to the last resort — photographs.

Jacob Riis began photographing poor areas, drinking establishments and those streets on which the rest of new York did not want to know. Riis often shot at night with a flash, which allowed the details to capture immigrants and the miserable conditions in which they lived.

Sleeps in a furnished house.

In 1890 Jacob Riis combined his work in the book "How the other half lives: slums of new York" (How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York). With these images, the audience saw an unknown until the sad reality.

A blind man begging.

A woman suffering from tuberculosis, lives on the roof.

Family making artificial flowers.

Dormitory.

At the home of Italian ragpicker.

Homeless children.

A children's Playground.

In the office of the newspaper the Sun, 3 hours in the morning.

A school lesson.

Homeless children of immigrant Arabs.

The boys from the Italian quarter.