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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
An essential book for those who are interested in housing and urban planning in large metropolitan areas, specifically in New York. This is a first hand account of the slums which various types of immigrants and African Americans lived in during the 1880s, located in Harlem. It reveals the power of flash photography and the miserable and inhumane conditions of Tenements. The narrator is dreadfully racist, yet his stereotypes are so outlandish and brutally honest that you can't help but laugh at his observations! With the right perspective, one can better understand the current divisions of New York City and the movement/ideology of gentrification in certain areas.
You can read it here:
http://www.authentichistory.com/1898-1913/2-progressivism/2-riis/index.html
http://www.authentichistory.com/1898-1913/2-progressivism/2-riis/index.html
Very interesting take on how the immigrants of NYC lived and how the author wanted the readers to feel sympathy for the less fortunate.
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
I can't say that I really "enjoyed" a book like this, especially when so much of it feels like it never went away.
Not a piece of impressive journalism, but a devastatingly important piece of history. Jacob Riis photography of the slums of New York and subsequent book of same capture lives not much reflected upon. If I was in charge of any educational curriculum anywhere, I would make this required reading. The photography brings home in a way that a thousand dry texts could not how little people with money are concerned with the welfare of those without. There are those championing the cause of reform and they are given credit here—but they are struggling against tall odds and fighting for crumbs off the big table. The brutality and squalor of New York tenement life about the turn of the century is so vividly presented that I often wondered if it were a movie I had seen before but forgotten or if I had traveled in time and walked right into the scene. So much of our vision is directed upward towards achievement that we don’t look down to those being crushed beneath progress. It is important to recognize that those being photographed are not visiting poverty for the photo op but that they wake up to it in the morning, breath it in all day long and sleep with it at night—the grind never leaves their skin. Another book that struck me the same way was Jacob Holdt’s AMERICAN PICTURES where a Dutch photographer traveled below the poverty line in the American 1970’s soaking up the social struggles and despair of daily life. Can’t recommend either of these works enough to reshape your view of the world.
I really appreciate this book for its historical context and the photographic evidence (some editions have much better quality photo reproductions than others - be careful of the poor reprints). However, I find it difficult to stay engaged in Riis's narrative style.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
It is the photographs that make this such an enduring book. Calls for reform, the impact of different nationalities and communities on New York City's tenements all dissolve before the captivating images. People striving to earn a few pennies collecting flowers, the endless trek of people scurrying on their way to what . . . ? And in almost every photo I kept seeing a recurring theme: the search for individual dignity. This was an era in which culture disseminated from the top social classes to the bottom. Thus in photo after photo, even the dirtiest, over worn, patched garment echoes the top hats and business suits of the social elite. Look closely, and you will easily see the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's character of the The Tramp, a humorous albeit melancholy figure in search of self worth and dignity, in the pictures.
An interesting time capsule of Victorian philanthropy, the pre-social movement state of industrialised society, and bourgeois snobbery and racism.
No doubt the book was instrumental in convincing those with the power to improve the state of the New York tenements and no doubt it helped convince those with power redact the Chinese Exclusion Act and no doubt it helped pave the way for the early twentieth century shift towards social reform. However, a lot of Riis' causes are problematic. Whilst at the close of the book he correctly identifies the issues of absentee landlords and hints at the issues of uncaring politicians, throughout his fingering of social ills as the causes of poverty rather than the symptoms are equally part of the mindset that would lead to Prohibition. His Christian hysteria; perhaps a precursor to the anti-abortionists and myriad anti-secular chuckleheads who would prefer a Victorian landscape as well as mindset.
He's also pretty racist. That's not entirely surprising - a lot of Victorians were - and especially in a city as diverse as NYC in 1890. But he's almost clinical in his classification of the differences in the races, and oddly specific in which races he prefers. He likes Jews, Czechs ('Bohemians'), Italians and pities Africans, but dislikes Irish and Chinese, the latter to extremes. However, he states that he is in favour of allowing the door to be opened to Chinese immigration, but only to stop them bothering white women and to curb opium dens. Eh.
He's also very concerned about making money, displaying his bourgeois tendencies. His is an American view: if a thing does not profit, it is not worth doing. It is the root of all of the USA's problems. However, without incentive for this problem, how is it to be fixed? I do not think he adequately deals with this question, beyond a vague appeal to landlords to be less greedy. He also does not particularly touch on working conditions in a city of sweatshops only 21 years away from the worst workplace disaster, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which I think is a massive oversight and inextricably linked to the problems he tackles. He does at least mention, in great detail, low wages and high rents, but does not outright state that either are major issues. His conclusions are legislative, which is valid but not the entire picture.
For a Danish-speaker, his prose is pretty damn good in parts. However, he will lose you in other parts by how overcomplicated he likes to make his prose. More of the same. Often you felt you were walking in 19th century New York. The pictures were also mostly fantastic, though the equipment, I imagine, was not as good as his eye or good enough for the dingy places he liked to photograph.
No doubt the book was instrumental in convincing those with the power to improve the state of the New York tenements and no doubt it helped convince those with power redact the Chinese Exclusion Act and no doubt it helped pave the way for the early twentieth century shift towards social reform. However, a lot of Riis' causes are problematic. Whilst at the close of the book he correctly identifies the issues of absentee landlords and hints at the issues of uncaring politicians, throughout his fingering of social ills as the causes of poverty rather than the symptoms are equally part of the mindset that would lead to Prohibition. His Christian hysteria; perhaps a precursor to the anti-abortionists and myriad anti-secular chuckleheads who would prefer a Victorian landscape as well as mindset.
He's also pretty racist. That's not entirely surprising - a lot of Victorians were - and especially in a city as diverse as NYC in 1890. But he's almost clinical in his classification of the differences in the races, and oddly specific in which races he prefers. He likes Jews, Czechs ('Bohemians'), Italians and pities Africans, but dislikes Irish and Chinese, the latter to extremes. However, he states that he is in favour of allowing the door to be opened to Chinese immigration, but only to stop them bothering white women and to curb opium dens. Eh.
He's also very concerned about making money, displaying his bourgeois tendencies. His is an American view: if a thing does not profit, it is not worth doing. It is the root of all of the USA's problems. However, without incentive for this problem, how is it to be fixed? I do not think he adequately deals with this question, beyond a vague appeal to landlords to be less greedy. He also does not particularly touch on working conditions in a city of sweatshops only 21 years away from the worst workplace disaster, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which I think is a massive oversight and inextricably linked to the problems he tackles. He does at least mention, in great detail, low wages and high rents, but does not outright state that either are major issues. His conclusions are legislative, which is valid but not the entire picture.
For a Danish-speaker, his prose is pretty damn good in parts. However, he will lose you in other parts by how overcomplicated he likes to make his prose. More of the same. Often you felt you were walking in 19th century New York. The pictures were also mostly fantastic, though the equipment, I imagine, was not as good as his eye or good enough for the dingy places he liked to photograph.