Jacob Riis: The Immigrant Photographer Who Captured New York's Forgotten Half (26 Photos)
In 1870, 21-year-old Jacob Riis immigrated from his native Denmark to a rapidly growing New York City. He arrived with just $40 in his pocket, a gold locket containing a lock of hair from the sweetheart he left behind, and dreams of working as a carpenter. Like hundreds of thousands of other immigrants, Riis came to the United States in search of a better life. Instead, all he found was poverty, social inequality, and unemployment.
Forced to settle in dark, disease-ridden slums, Riis lived in extreme hardship without steady work. He got by on odd jobs—working as a farmhand and ironworker—until he eventually landed a position as a trainee journalist at the New York News Association. 
Portrait of Jacob Riis. 
Before long, Riis began working as a police reporter, bringing him face-to-face once again with the impoverished residents of the slums. 
He began documenting the plight of poor immigrants in writing. 
When words alone no longer felt like enough, Riis turned to a final resort: photography. 
Jacob Riis set out to photograph impoverished neighborhoods, saloons, and the streets that the rest of New York preferred to ignore. Often shooting at night using early flash technology, he captured in vivid detail the immigrants and the squalid conditions in which they lived. 
Sleeping quarters in a lodging house. 
In 1890, Jacob Riis compiled his photographs into the landmark book
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
. Through these images, the public was confronted with a tragic reality that had previously remained hidden. 
A blind man begging. 
A woman suffering from tuberculosis living on a roof. 
A family making artificial flowers. 
Sleeping quarters. 
Inside an Italian rag-picker's home. 
Homeless children. 
A children's playground. 
Inside the office of
The Sun
newspaper, 3:00 AM. 
A school lesson. 
Homeless Arab immigrant children. 
Boys in Little Italy.
