American history tv on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Youre looking at a time laps video reco lapse video, next on American History tvs american artifacts we visit the Thomas Jefferson building to learn. This program is just under an hour. Im sheryl, heim an exhibit director at the library of congress. Im barbara bear. Im a historian in the manuscript division. This jacob riis is a copresentation with the museum of the city of new york. It is the first time that the collections of the library of congress, the jacob riis papers have been married with the collection in the museum of the city of new york. We picked the word copresentation very carefully, because the exhibition here actually follows an exhibit that was at the museum of the city of new york and really that exhibit which was called jacob riis, revealing new yorks other half, was slightly difference. It looks at riis in a different way, concentrating more on his boggy and photographry. Here we look at riis the journalist. The papers number 3,000 in the manuscript division, theyre featured well in this exhibition and have sort of come to the fore front. We already wanted to emphasize the combination of the photographs in terms of his career as a photojournalist. People think of him as a writer or a photographer. Were emphasizing the combination of those two things and his role as a communicator. We have organized the exhibit by different ways that and the different mediums that riis used as a reformer, and as an ally with other people who were getting the word out and educating the public about urban poverty, about immigration and the density of housing in lower manhattan, and to provide solutions to those kinds of issues, and hes really a creature of the gilded age. He comes into real celebrity in the 1890s and the early 1900s. So its kind of on that cusp between older models of poverty from the gilded aim in the late victorian period and the new aggressive era, more governmental kinds of policies and solutions, so he had a foot in both worlds and thats another major point in the exhibit. Jay job riis was borne in 1849 in denmark. He was the son of a schoolteacher and was raised in this very beautiful small town in denmark. He was not a good student, although he loved to read. He played hooky a lot. He had a lot of sympathy for truant young boys when he tall. Some of his articles address true ansi, c antsy. When he was 21yearold in 1870 he came to the United States by himself. He found work doing all kinds of odd jobs, worked as a laborer, a door to door salesman, sometimes homeless, sometimes sleeping at night in the lodging houses. All this experience he brought into his articles later as he was more established as a Police Reporter and had a salaried job in the lower part of manhattan. My names bonnie, and i wrote the complete collection catalog of rii ss photograph published on the occasion of the exhibition. I started in the 1980s in rii ss new york photographs. He was a journalist and he was a celebrity and he saved all of the documentation of his career. He wanted to be remembered for posterity. He created scrapbooks. He saved his manscrips, every scrap of paper and he abandoned his photographs because he didnt think they were of any value apart from his articles a and. There was a photographer riis died in 1914. In 1940s a photographer named alexander lamb noticed in rii ss book how the other half live. On the title page it says with illustrations after photographiced by the ather. He said where are the photographs. After several years of searching, he tracked down rii ss son and with much coercing got rii ss son to try to find pictures, which turned out to be in the attic in the familys home in squooens, new york, that was about to be torn down. His son discovered 400odd negatives, 300 land earn slides and almost 200 paper prints and delivered them to alexander oland, the photograph, taking a couple of years kpraeted an exhibition from the negatives, making beautiful modder prints from the negatives and working with the curator of the museum of new york. In the battle with the slum, beautiful enlarged pictures along with kpermtsz from ri, ss writings established him as an important photographer. My problem as a curator in the 1980s was we dont have prints to show because those almost 200 vintage prints, about half of which were not by riis at all, and the rest were not exhibitble at all, in such poor condition. Working with the museum staff, we applied for i applied for a grant for the National Endowment for the humanities and we made a set of what they call vintage printed material prints, the purpose being to make prints that would look like those that riis would recognize. He never worked in the dark room. He went to a commercial several commercial studios and said i need prints, i need lantern slides. He himself used the camera but was not an expert technician, so we wanted these very expert technicians who the museum hired to make shes prints, not to do what alexander land did in the 40s, but simply to make contact prints from the negative and that is what is on exhibition here to represent rii ss photographs. There was a particular in terms of you are back reform and he eventually would succeed in working with municipal authorities to replace it with a park, which is another story we tell deeper into the exhibit with, original items. Again, the paradox riss is he wasnt a real photograph fehr. He used the camera for a very few years, less than ten years, and he only took about 300 pictures, about a third of which were family snapshots and other things that are not what we not of historic importance. The most famous picture today is bandits roof which shows a couple of italian toughs wearing boller hats. That was copied by martin score zazy in the movie the gangs of new york. When he first had the idea to illustrate the slums in 1887, he reached out to a photographer friend and found two photographers who were interested in flash, flash photographer was the reason he had the idea to eastern use photographs at all. He was a writer. He was a journalist. He was writing in a daily newspaper about conditions in the slum. He read in the newspaper in 1887 that there was this New Invention of flash powder that could illuminate the darkness. So he worked with two other photographers who were serious amateurs who were interested in the technology of flash. Among their photographs is bandits roost. This has two lenlzs. There are two images but it is the right side which has the two tufts in the boller. Thats did famous image. His most famous was not taken by him. In flash photograph called hits the spot. What its demonstrating is people who pay 5 cents or 7 cents to to sleep for the night in a tenement house. The people up on the shelf paid 7 and on the floor 5. There was a law in new york that you had to provide a bed for someone and the lowest you could charge was 7 cents. This was an illegal shelter and riss took the picture, that was taken by him, not by the other amateurs. He took the picture a member of the Sanitary Police who are essentially raiding the place and saying this get up and out, this is illegal. So entering this room which only had the slightest bit of light from coal stove that was providing heat for the room. Riss entered with the police, set up his camera, essentially set off an explosion, which sounded like a gun, a boom with smoke and fire and whats captured in the picture is the faces some people are still sleeping and other people vn anewsed and look sort of stricken, for good respect under the circumstance. The people in the room, 13 people in the room, including an infant, a screaming infant. Its a horrific scene. He used the picture to try to rouse authorities to enforcing laws about these lodging houses. And he describes that in his book. So that is a fantastic example of risss flash photographs creating a very powerful port rate of inhumane conditions. He was essentially victimizing the subjects. He scared these people to death and they look it and that is a criticism, a modern criticism today of these flach photographs. It was not his intention but it is from a contemporary piston a problem. The middle photograph is the signature photograph for our exhibit. This is little katy. It represents another phase in risss approach to his subject matter in photography. Originally he worked with amateur photographers to take the photographs. Then he started taking them himself. The bandits roof was his first book. Katy was in his second book called children of the poor. He was more like a social worker, caseworker. He had discussions with his subject matters where here the logisticsers were surprised by men bursting into the room and taking their photograph. He learned katys name. He was living with her siblings in a 49th street tenement. His mother had died. When asked what do i do, she said i scrubs. Katy stayed at home. Shes nine years old and she scrubbed and cooked for the family and went to school when she could. This is a birdseye view of new york in 1879. Birdseye views were popular until really the turn slightly after the turn of the century, and they put buildings in sort and sort of gave an idea of the density of space and put buildings in perspective, so you see the Lower East Side here where riss was primarily working, and it is astounding sort of how many people are sort of crammed and how many structures are crammed into this space. The u. S. Census bureau said 1. 5 Million People living primarily in lower manhattan. Riss claimed it was the largest population, most densely populated city on earth, which may or may not have been the case, but thats how he claimed in how the other half lives. I think if you look at the map, it speaks to that density, that crowdedness, sort of the issues that he was addressing. So we had been talking about the importance that jacob riss had lived many of the issues he wrote about as a Police Reporter and how he came from denmark in 1870 at the age of 20. In our first case in the exhibit we emphasize his life story or biography. We used notes that we have in his manuscript collection at the library of congress from the making of an american, which is his auto bbiographyautobiograph. He gave this as a land earn slide rec chulecture, based on making of an american and also his book battle of the slum. We have featured pages from that in almost all the cases. For the auto biography, he talked about his naivete. He was fluent in english when he came to the United States but one of his favorite authors was james physiciany moore cooper and he had this notion that america was the wild west and he said we didnt know the difference east and west. He gets out at castle garden. Hes in this metropolis of new york and there are no box offuf. He was making fun of himself. He was telling jokes in his lecture. This is a funny story about this green kid getting off the boat and buying a rover, which he scrapped to that side of his coat. He was strutting down broadway and the Police Stopped him and said son, maybe youll get rid of the gun. It was a fun story. It was a hard time goff jacob riss. He was unable to find steady work. He worked a lot of odd jobs and he got very depressed. One of the things were showing is a wonderful early diary of his thats written partly in danish and then he switches to english. In the diary, its about his loneliness when he first came here and pining for his love elizabeth, which was at that point unrequited. She was back in denmark. Really suicidal feelings. Theres a great love score with riss and his wife elizabeth. Eventually she does succumb to his courtship and they marry in 1876 in denmark and they come back and settle first in brooklyn and then in Richland Hill in queens new york and have a family. A lot of jacob risss motivation in life is that everyone should have a healthy and safe, happy family like he does. He writes a lot about the welfare of children, in particular. He would tell his audiences theres no difference between these children or yours and mine. Thats the five children. There were other children that died young. So next were going to talk about what looks like a strange assemblage of equipment. Things that were not used to seeing these days. But this is photographic equipment similar to what riss would have used on his raiding parties that barbara described earlier. What we have here is actually a camera, a detective camera. This was a stealth camera. It could be used without a tripod. It could be held by the strap on the side, so it gave the photographer some mobility. And the other thing that was an innovation and sort of allowed for a lot of mobility at that time was the invention and introduction of dry plate negatives. Previous to this time, you had to coat a plate with colodian. It was a laborious process. You had to expose your yeg active right away. This enabled you to buy these plates already prepared. This is the size of the plate. This is the holder that we see here. You could carry a few with you and make a number of exposures in a particular outing. And what we have in the back is a flash pan. So riss learned about the german invention of flash powder in 1887. And hes very interested in it. He understands that he could be using this to great effect for his work, and the first as barbara said earlier, the first application of the flash powders would be put in a pistol. It would make a big flash of life. The flash powder holder was not that much better and very, very dangerous, but you would put the magnesium flash powder in the pan, probably take a fuse, light the fuse, and again it would go off in a big whoomph and you would have a big burst of life and enable the photographs that riss took in these dark spaces, that these spaces would be ilaluminum ace inned so that you would get some image on the dry plate. Theres also the question of how did riss use his photographs . He made the initial photographs between 1887 and 1892. That was the peak period of his photography. He used photography as a tool for his journalism. At the same time he was doing the lectures and showing them as lantern slides, he was also still a Police Reporters and his intent was that he would use these images to add illustrations of his articles. In this case, which is about him as a Police Reporter, we wanted to demonstrate how it would look when youve had a print of a photograph and how it would show as a line drawing in the periodical press. So what would happen is an illustrator would be hired. He would make a line drawing and then an engraving, and that would be printed in the newspaper. The reason for that was that thing to was not there yet to do half tones in the newspapers. They did make rather flat half tones that were in magazines and monthly journals for which riss also wrote as a free lance journalist, but it wasnt until the 1890s that the quality was good preproduction photographs. At that time riss stopped taking photographs and purchased photographs taken by other people. His original idea is to appeal visually and combine the image and the word in order to persuade people. Riss was hired to work as on the beat, basically, reporting crimes and anything that happened through the police department. For six years he was on night work where his Newspaper Office where we worked for the new york tribune, and we have a photograph from the library of congress checks of riss in the tribune office, which was at 301 mulberry street, right across the street from the Police Headquarters. Hes there with his friend and fellow reporter amos janson and riss is in the corner and anson is at the desk. He would basically follow the Police Whenever theyd get a call, a murder or a crime, and hed write about these stories. He got a lot of Human Interest stories from this. This is partly how he got access to the inside of tenement buildings. He was a recognized face. Many people thought he was a doctor because he came so often with the department of health or Sanitation Division when they were doing investigations of the ten ments and he would be with them. He was recognized. He reported for the newspapers but he also started doing Human Interest stories that focused on the conditions faced by the poor. Theyre the kinds of issues that were showing in the exhibit on the sidewalk, including housing and public health, public space, labor, immigration, and he wanted to expose how difficult the circumstances were under which the poor were living, especially did immigrant poor. There were over 138 charities active at the time that were dealing with the indigent and the poor in one way or the other. Encouraging philanthropists to enjoy things like lodging houses and to also work with the government to bring about municipal reforms. When riss went on the road he started off doing his lanternside lectures in new york city, but eventually he had tours all over the country in many different cities. He would travel with the lat earn lat earn slide. He would be paid about 150 to for his services and he traveled across the country. It was astounding. We do have his appointment books that show hed be in a different city every night practically. And so this is a very delux model, but again, he could have been using this. Its a stereoptican which allows one slide to fate in and one to fade out. There are other models that have just one lens. We have this in the exhibit at the courtesy of the American Magic lantern group. It was in in museum of the city of new york. Here we have a video running that is based on the one transcript we have of risss lecture. Out of o the alleys comes the problem of the children. This one came out to the alley just as she is here on the left. The hair was matted with blood and her whole body was covered with sores. The future of this child, can you read it in her face . I can. And after she had been in the care of the society for the prevention of cruelty for the children, thats not been heard since the moving stars sang together. You have seen the boys and girls and you have seen their homes. Here is the father of some such, so drunk that when we fired the photographic flash, he never woke up. This case is about his lecturing. The post cards show these ar been abused. Very serious subject matter but he lightened it up by telling a lot of jokes. Some of those jokes are not so funny to us anymore because theyre ethnic jokes and it were in humor that would been popular in vaudeville. I came across this tramp and i told him id gi