Look at the social reformer and photographer and this program is just under an hour. I am cheryl regan, im an exhibitor at the library of congress. On the curator of this exhibit, and im a historian at the library of congress. This exhibition jacob wreaths it is the first time that the collection jacob riis and the jacob jacob riis papers is a stellar collection at the city of new york. We pick the word go presentation very good now and very carefully because the exhibition here actually follows an exhibit that was at the museum in the city of new york and really that exhibit had revealed new yorks other half, and its slightly different it looks in a slightly different way and concentrating more on his biography more on his photography and here we are looking at jacob riis as a journalist because that is the strength of our collection the papers here which number 3000, and the Manuscript Division features well and come to the forefront. We also really wanted to emphasize the combination of the photographs and manuscripts in terms of jacob riis. And his career. People think of them as a writer or a photographer. We are emphasizing the combination of those two things. And his role as a communicator. We have organized the exhibit by different ways and different mediums that he used as a Police Reporter, a writer, a photographer, as a reformer and as an ally with other people who are active in social change movement. To get the word out and educate the public about urban poverty, about immigration and the density of housing in Lower Manhattan and to provide solutions to those kinds of issues. He is a creature of the gilded age. He comes into real celebrity in the 1890s and early 1900s. He is kind of on the cusp between older models of poverty from the gilded age in the late victorian period and more progressive, governmental policies and solutions. He had a foot in both worlds. He was born in 1849 in denmark. He was the son of a schoolteacher and was basically raised in a beautiful small town. He was a rebellious youth and even though he was the son of a teacher, he was not a good student even though he loved to read. He played hooky a lot and when he was in new york, he had a lot of sympathy for some of these truant young boys. Some of these articles are about truancy. A lot of what he wrote about, he did have personal experience because he was an immigrant to the United States. When he was 21 years old, in 1870, he came to the United States by himself. He had a hard time initially. Hard time finding work, he did all kinds of odd jobs. Worked as a laborer, worked as a doortodoor salesman, sometimes homeless. Sometimes sleeping at night and homeless shelters. In his experience, he brought into his articles when he was more established as a Police Reporter and had a salaried job in the lower part of manhattan. My name is bonnie yokelson naira to complete collection catalog of riiss photographs. My engagement started in the 1980s when i was curator of the museum of city of new york. There is a great paradox to his photographs which is that he was a journalist and a celebrity and he said all the documentation of his career. He wanted to be remembered for posterity that he created. He created scrapbooks to save his manuscript, every scrapbook paper. And he abandoned his photographs because he didnt think they were of any valuable, apart from his words, apart from his arguments and his articles and his allocations. The way they were discovered is really fascinating. There was a photographer, riis died in 1914, one and a, a photographer named alexander were lanb noticed in recent book how at the other half lives, we and he saw the illustrations after photographs by the author. So he said to himself, well where are these photographs . And after several years of searching, he tracked down riiss sun and with much coercing he got riiss some to try to find the pictures which. Turned out to be in the attic of the familys home, in queens, new york. That was about to be torn down. So his son discovered a box filled with 400 of negatives, 300 lantern and almost 200 paper prints. And he delivered them to alexander land, the photographer. He took a couple of years, and then created an exhibition from the negatives, making beautiful prints. And working with a curator at the museum with, in new york, to put on an exhibition called a battle of the slums, named for one of his books. In which these beautiful and large pictures, along with races writings established riis as an important photographer. And thats how he entered the history of photography. So my bar problem with the muse sitting easy im as accurate in the nineties was that we dont have prince to show. Because the almost 200 vintage prints, about half of which were not by riis at all, and the rest which wear in very poor condition, and not exhibit opal at all. So working with a museum staff i applied for a grant and we made a set of what they called vintage material prince, from the negatives. The purpose being to make prints that would look like those that riis would recognize. Not to us that a size, him not to turn him into an artist. He himself never worked in a dark room. He took his negatives to a commercial, several commercial studios and said i need prints. I need lanterns lights. So he himself used to, camera but was not in any way an expert technician. So we wanted these very expert technicians, who they museum hired, to make these prints, not to do what alexander lam did in the 19 forties. But simply make contact prints from the negatives. We and that is what is on exhibition here, to represent riiss photographs. At the beginning of the exhibit, we have chosen three very famous photographs from the lexicon of jacob riis. To the left is perhaps his most famous photograph, it was in the middle of an area called mulberry band. It was a section of mulberry street, near baxter street. It became particularly cause for riis in terms of urban reform. And he, eventually, with succeeding working with municipal authorities to demolish valerie and replaced with a park. Which is another story that we go deeper in the exhibit with original items. The products about riis himself is that he himself said he was a photographer after a fashion. So he was not a real photographer. He used a camera for a few years. Less than ten years. And he only took about 300 pictures, about a third of which were family snapshots and other things, which are not of historic importance. His most famous picture today, is banned its roof, which shows a couple of tough, italian toughs, wearing butler has. In fact, that picture was copied by Martin Scorsese in the movie gangs of new york. So its kind of an iconic image. When he first had the idea to use photographs to illustrate the slums, that was an 1887. He reached out to a friend, who was a photographer, and he found two photographers who were interested in flash. Flash photography was recent. He had the idea to even use photographs are all. He was a, writer a journalist, he was writing in the newspaper about the conditions in the slums. He read in the conditions in the newspapers in 1887 that there was this new invention, flash, powder that could illuminate the darkness. And he said yes. So he worked with these two other photographers who were serious amateurs, who are interested in flash. They were interested in the technology. And among their photographs is banned its which was actually taken with this terrier graphic camera, which has to lenses. So there are actually two images. The right side is the one that is the famous image. Again, another irony, that his most famous image was not actually taken by him. But the flash photographs, but i think is the most important of the flash photographs, is one called five senses spot. And what its demonstrating, there are people who paid five cents or seven cents per night to have temporary lodging inhouse. They werent living, but they would come just to sleep for the night. And those people on the floor paid five cents. And the people up on the shelf paid seven cents. There was a law in new york that you had to provide a bed, of some kind, for someone. The lowest price you could charge was seven cents. So the title indicates to the viewer, that this was illegal shelter. And riis took the picture, that was taken by him, not by the other amateurs. He took the picture with a member of the sanitary police, who were essentially writing the place. And saying get up and out, this is illegal. So entering this room, which only had the slightest bit of light from coal stoves that was providing heat for the room, riis entered with the police, set up his camera, essentially set off an explosion, which sounded like a gun. With smoke and fire. And it was captured in the picture, its the faces, some people are still sleeping, and others have been aroused. And look sort of stricken, for good reason. By the circumstance. The picture in his description of the scene, in his book, he says there were 13 people in that room, tiny little room, including an infant. Screaming in front. So its a horrific scene. And he used that to try to enforce, to try to arouse authorities to enforcing the laws about these lodging houses. And he describes that in his book. So that is a fantastic example of one of riiss flash photographs, were creating a very powerful portrait of inhumane conditions. Pictures like that have been criticized for essentially victimizing his subjects. He came in, there was no consent, he scared these people to death, and they look and that is a criticism. A modern criticism, today, of these flash photographs. I was not his intention, but it is from a contemporary point of view, a problem. The middle photograph is the signature photograph for our exhibit. This is a little cagey. It represents another phase in riiss approach to his subject matter and photography. Originally, he worked with amateur photographers to take the photograph. Then he started taking them himself. And the first, the bandits roofs photograph and a lodging, was in his name is. Book and katie was in the second book. Which came out in 1892, called children of the poor. And in that book, i was more like a social worker caseworker. He actually had discussions with the subject matters where, here, the launches were just surprised by men verging into the room. And taking a photograph. Katie, he talked to katie, he learned her name, he learned her story. Her mother had died, she was living with her siblings on the 49th street. And he took this picture at the 52nd industrial school. And when he said, katie what do you do . Katie said i scrubs. So her older siblings, were working in a hammock factory during the. David katie stayed home, shes nine years old. Then she scrubbed uncooked for that family. It also went to school, and she could. This is a birdseye view of new york in 1879. Birds eye views were popular until slightly after the turn of the century. And they put buildings and gave an idea of the density of space. They put buildings in perspective. So you see the lower east side, here, where riis was primarily working. And it is astounding to see how many people are cramped, and how many structures are crammed, into this space. The u. S. Census bureau at the time said that this was the most densely crowded city in the United States. 1. 5 Million People lived primarily in Lower Manhattan. We riis claimed it was the largest, most densely populated city on earth. Which may or may not have been the case. But thats when he claimed. And i think if you look at this map, it really speaks to that density, that crowded in us. The issues that he was addressing. So we have been talking about the importance that jacob riis had lived many of the issues he wrote about later as a Police Reporter, and how he came to the United States as an immigrant from denmark, in 1870. He was 21 years old and in our first case in the exhibit, we emphasize his life story or biography. And one of the things that we decided to do in making the exhibit was to use notes that we have in his manuscript collection, at the library of congress, from the making of america. It was his autobiography, which he published in 1901. He also gave one as a lantern slide lecture. And we have in his collection his notes from a lantern slides lecture, which were based after making the book the making of an american. And we have featured peaches from that in almost all the cases. And here, for biography, we used the very first one, where he talked about his naivete when he first came to new york. Im back in denmark, he loved to read american literature, he was quite fluent in english when he came to the United States. But one of his favorite authors was james cooper. And he had this vision, as many scandinavians did, that america was the wild west. And he said, we didnt know the difference between east and west. So here he is, he gets out at castle garden, he is in this metropolis, how to new york, and there are no buffalos. But the very first thing he did was he bought a revolver. Hes making fun of himself. Often, he was telling jokes in his lecture. So this is a funny story about this green kane buying a rebel revolver. Which hes dropped out of his coat. And he is shutting down broadway, in a police stops him and said son, maybe it will want to get rid of the gun. So its a funny story. What it actually was a very hard time for jacob riis when he first game. He had a lot of difficulty making a living, finding work. He was unable to find steady work. He worked a lot of odd jobs. And he got very depressed. And one of the things we are showing, from the new york public library, is a wonderful early diary of his written partly in danish and then he switches to english. And the diary, its really about his loneliness when he first came here. And his pining for his love, elizabeth, which was at that time unrequited. She was back in denmark. And his suicidal feelings. Wow it was very difficult in the beginning. A great love story with riis and his wife elizabeth. She does succumb to his courtship and they marry 1876 in denmark and come back and settle first in brooklyn and then in Richmond Hill and have a family. A lot of jacob riiss motivation in life is that everyone should have a healthy safe and Healthy Family like he does. He wrote a lot about emilys and the welfare of children in particular. He would say there is no difference between these children and mine. There were some other children that died young. Next we are going to talk about what looks like a strange assemblage of equipment. Things that we are not used to seeing. This is photographic equipment. Very similar to what riis you would use on his raiding parties. What we have here is a camera. This is a stealth camera that could be used without a tripod, it could be held by the strap on the side. It gave the photographer some mobility. The other thing that allowed for a lot of mobility at that time was the introduction of dry plate negatives. It is to this time, you had to tote plate with collodion. It was a laborious process. This enabled you to buy plates already prepared. This was a holder here. You could carry a few with you and make a number of exposures. What we have in the back here is a flash pan. He learns about the german invention of using flash powder in 1887. He was very interested. He understands that he could be using this to great effect for his work. As barbara said earlier, the first application of the flash powder was put into pistols and you would go in and set it off and there would be a big room, a big flash of light big boom, a big flash of light and it would scare the people being photographed. This flash powder holder was not much better and very dangerous. You would put the magnesium flash powder in the pan. Take a fuse, light the fuse and it would go off in a big boom. Again, you would have a big burst of light and enable the photograph that riis took in the dark spaces that these spaces would be illuminated so you would get some image. There is also the question of how did riis use these photographs . He made these initial photographs and he really saw himself not as a photographer, he thought he was using photography as a tool for journalism. We have to remember that at the same time he was doing lectures and showing them as lantern slides, he was also still a Police Reporter. His intent was that he would use these images as illustrations of his articles. In this case, which is about him as a Police Reporter, who wanted to demonstrate how it would look with an actual print of the photograph and how it would show as a line drawing in the periodical press. What would happen is, an illustrator would be hired, they would make a line drawing and then integrating and engraving and then theyll be printed in the newspaper. They would make flat halftones in magazines and journals for which riis wrote as a freelance journalist. But it was only in the 1890s that the quality was betternot until the 1890s that the quality was good enough to have good reproduction of the photograph. Then he would purchase photographs by other people. His original idea is to appeal visually and combined the image and the word in order to sway people. Riis was hired to work on the beat. Reporting crimes and anything that happened to the police department. For six years, he was on night work where his newspaper office, he worked for the new york tribune. We have a photograph from the library and the tribune office. Right across the street from Police Headquarters. He is there with his friend and fellow reporter amos enson and riis is in the corner. He would basically follow the police when they would get a call or a murderer or a crime and he would write about the story. He had a lot of Human Interest stories. This is probably how he had access to the inside of tenement buildings. Many people in the neighborhood thought he was a doctor because he came so often. When they were doing investigations of the tenements, he would be with them. He was a trusted and known face on the street. He also started doing Human Interest stories that focused on the conditions faced by the poor. They are the kinds of issues that we are showing in the exhibit including housing and Public Health and public space, labor, immigration. He wanted to expose how difficult the circumstances were under which the poor were living. Especially the immigrant poor. And to encourage people to either give money to charities, there were over 138 charities active at the time dealing with the poor or to encourage philanthropists to give a lot of money to endow things like lodging houses, and to also work with the government to bring