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The Reformer, His Journalism, and His Photographs
New Press
February 2008
On Sale: February 1, 2008
336 pages
ISBN: 1595581995
EAN: 9781595581990
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
A provocative new illustrated history of the famed early
chronicler of New York's immigrant poor, seen here as an
opportunistic, camera-toting social reformer whose legacy
lives on. "I don't remember my mother or my aunts and uncles talking
of their father as a photographer....In his letters—I have
read most of them—he never mentions a camera."—J. Riis Owre
(grandson of Jacob Riis) More than ninety years after his death, Jacob Riis
maintains a stubbornly persistent hold on the American
imagination. Remembered as a pioneering photographer, he
was the first to document the state of New York's slums,
publicizing in haunting photographs the plight of the urban
poor at the height of European immigration to the city. But
Riis confessed to being "no good at all as a photographer"
and in recent years has been disparaged for racist views
and political opportunism. In Rediscovering Jacob Riis, Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel
Czitrom address the complex legacy of the pioneering social
reformer. In a work of highly original scholarship, they
reclaim Riis from the art camp, relocating him in the field
of social and cultural history. Their provocative new book
reveals Riis to be an inspired self-promoter who, although
neither an original thinker nor a serious photographer,
nevertheless framed the discussion of urban poverty in
terms still relevant today. Extensively illustrated with Riis's images, Rediscovering
Jacob Riis is revisionist history at its best, as appealing
to photographers, journalists, and social historians as it
is to the general reader.
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