Jacob August Riis: 100+ Documentary Photographic Reproductions

Jacob August Riis: 100+ Documentary Photographic Reproductions

(Revised 12/2014 - 100+ Larger HD photographs with annotations and Riis biography.)

JACOB AUGUST RIIS Art Book contains 100+ Reproductions of documentary photos of the New York City tenements with annotations and Riis biography. Book includes Table of Contents, Top 50 Museums of the World, and is formatted for all Kindle devices, Kindle for iOS and Android Tablets (use rotate and/or zoom feature on landscape/horizontal images for optimal viewing).

Jacob August Riis Biography

As he did every morning, the intense but kindly man barrelled into the crowded streets of tenements that filled lower Manhattan. But rather than first heading to his police reporterâ€™s office, he began handing out the flowers that curiously overflowed his arms to the shocked children of the slums. As the floral benefactor later recalled, if anyone doubted the equal humanity of the poorest children, they should do as he had and see the â€œeager love with which the little messengers of peace are shielded.â€ He had seen that day â€œan armful of daisies keep the peace of a block better than a policeman and his club, seen instincts awaken under their gentle appeal.â€

That year of 1888 was a typically energetic and productive one for Jacob Riis. In the midst of the winter, he had entered the darkest places of the metropolis as he had done for a decade, fearlessly and candidly reporting on poverty, crime, and disease for the New York Tribune. But for the first time in his hands, rather than a notebook, was a detectiveâ€™s camera, a frying pan, and innovative flash powder. His work had always been to shine a light on the places that New Yorkers could and would not see, but now this vocation became quite literal. By the end of January, he was presenting a new lecture: The Other Half: How it Lives and Dies in New York. Illustrated with a 100 Photographic Views.

Eighteen years earlier, Riis had been part of that other half as a newly arrived immigrant from Denmark. Penniless, he drifted between various odd-jobs around New York and the north-east for a couple of years, reduced to homeless helplessness between dashed chances. But there was a fire in young Jacobâ€™s belly that kept him going and baiting the hook for fortuneâ€™s bite time after time. Against all reason and evidence, Jacob had kept up his belief that the Danish girl with whom he was infatuated would, if he could make it, change her mind and marry him.

Jacob had first fallen for Elisabeth Nielsen in 1864 when he was a fifteen-year-old carpenterâ€™s apprentice and she was the twelve-year-old adopted daughter of the local business magnate. A bookish but not academically studious boy, Jacob was already a disappointment to his school-teacher father and there was not much chance that such a girl would give him a second look. While she was causing him to fall off roofs and chop off his own left forefinger in distraction, Jacob made little impression on her. But throughout a four-year carpentry apprenticeship in Copenhagen, as Riis biographer Tom Buk-Swienty narrates, â€œElisabeth had been his sole motivation for finishing.â€ (cont.)
Country USA
Manufacturer Ankele Publishing, LLC
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2014-03-18
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Ankele Publishing, LLC
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2014-03-18
Format	Kindle eBook

Jacob August Riis: 100+ Documentary Photographic Reproductions

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