At the turn of the 19th century, a Danish immigrant named Jacob Riis set out to change the slums of New York. Jacob, born in Denmark in 1849, emigrated to America at the age of 21, with little money in his pocket to seek work in the Northeast. He ended up working several jobs, including farming, sales, and ironworks. In 1873, he landed a job at a local newspaper as a police reporter covering stories that eventually took him deep into the heart of the slums. It was this twist of fate that led Jacob to write his book "How the Other Half Lives" and push for social reform to pass the New York State Tenement Act of 1901. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'?Get the original essayRiis worked at Mulberry Street Police Station as a police reporter. There he professionally acquitted all kinds of police officials, including Theodore Roosevelt, president of the New York Police Board. While working there, Riis learned which stories to publish and which stories to keep to himself, so that his career and professional relationships would continue. In one instance, Riis was presented, off the record, with a story about a case known only to Police Commissioner Matthews at the time, and almost printed it. The commissioner advised against talking to anyone about this matter, as it would be of no use. Riis persisted in publishing it when Matthews changed the subject by offering Jacob the handles of an electric drum, which Matthews was using at the time for medical reasons. As Jacob said in his autobiography: “I took them without knowing it and felt the current tingle in my fingertips. The next moment it gripped me like a vice. I squirmed in pain. (Riis, 1901, p216)” This is one of many anecdotes that make up Jacob's time with the Mulberry police, as they were not always on his side. During Jacob's many trips to Mulberry Street and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he came upon the decay of the slums. As he says: “It was during my midnight trips with the health police that the wish kept arising in me that there was a way to present to people what I saw there. (Riis, 1901, p266) » So he decided to turn to photography to capture this horrible environment, because his sketches did not represent what he saw very well. While reading the newspaper, Jacob came across an article that described a way to take pictures in low light: “A way had been discovered,” he ran, “of taking pictures with a flashlight. » With this enthusiasm, he asked Dr. John Nagle, who worked for the Ministry of Health in addition to being an amateur photographer, to help him in this new quest to illuminate the buildings of The Bend, a particularly unpleasant on Mulberry Street. Jacob gathered a group of amateur night photographers and a few police officers to attempt to photograph the bend, with little or no success. All the light cartridges were contained in large revolvers which, when carried by several men after midnight, frightened many tenants, who ran before a reasonable photo could be taken. After this setback, Jacob hires his own photographer to help him. The photographer proved unreliable in the early hours and also sold all the photos he had taken behind Jacob's back. This forced Jacob to learn to photograph on his own, taking a camera with plates to Potter's Field and, as a result, overexposing every photo hetook it. After almost burning down his house, Riis refined his photography and made the “Blitzlicht – literally, flashlight” work for him by running it in a frying pan. The Blitzlicht was made possible by mixing magnesium and potassium chlorate to create a brief but powerful flash of light. This allowed him to begin work on his book, How the Other Half Live: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890). Jacob Riis began documenting the urban decay of Mulberry Bend and Five Points. Taking photos late at night, he would stumble upon unsuspecting residents with the glare of his flash. This type of photography is evident in his photo "Tenants in a Crowded Building on Bayard Street – 'Five Hundred a Place'", where six or perhaps seven men sleep in a cramped apartment. In 1887, Jacob took a photo of a group of men with wide-brimmed hats, "...loitering in an alley known as the 'Bandits' Roost' (Johnson, 2019)." Riis continued his crusade through Five Points taking photos in the late hours of the night using Blitzlicht. Soon after, Jacob had collected all the photos he thought he would need and completed his book, publishing it in 1890. Roosevelt, who had read the book, stopped by Riis's employer, The Evening Sun, and left him a note simply saying, “Come over to help.” (Riis, 1901, p328) » Both began to patrol the streets together at night. Roosevelt examined how police officers carried out their tasks, including whether they were conscious or not. Both of them weren't just monitoring patrols, "sometimes it was the buildings we went to inspect while the tenants were sleeping." Overpopulation was a crime at the time and the police were in a situation where they were responsible for managing the slums. and the belly of Five Points. The police, however, had the same problem with housing at their station, where homeless men could spend the night. Police housing had serious health problems, ranging from typhus, which broke out in 1891, to dirty, damp boards used as beds. Riis took photos of these accommodations and took the negatives to the Academy of Medicine: “…the doctors knew the real extent of the peril we then faced. (Riis, 1901, p256) » With Teddy Roosevelt, Jacob went to each of the dwellings and inspected them. Roosevelt brought rapid reform to the New York City police headquarters, despite the appearance it made, "yellow newspapers...printed caricatures of homeless men shivering in front of a screen door 'closed by order of T. Roosevelt” (Riis, 1901, p. 259). "Five years after the typhus epidemic, police housing closed permanently. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized essay now from our expert writers. Get a custom essay Jacob faced opposition at every turn when he began his search for reform of Mulberry Bend and Five Points from Tammany Hall politicians, department heads of the Mulberry Police Department. Yellow journalism made Jacob's life more difficult, further tempering his determination to pursue photography and document the living situation in New York. Following his publications and his work with Theodore Roosevelt, the Five Points became the Mulberry. Bend Park With the invention of the Blitzlicht, Jacobs became a pioneer of flash photography, "but no one would have predicted that its very first mainstream use would take the form of a crusade against urban poverty." Works CitedJohnson, C. (2019). The bandits' roost: the..