A Discussion on ‘How the Other Half Lives’ by Jacob Riis

With the election of Bill de Blasio as the next mayor of New York City, it seemed a fitting time to read Jacob Riis’s pioneering work of social criticism, “How the Other Half Lives.” Published by Scribner’s in 1890, Riis’s book, sought to enlighten the out-of-touch upper classes on the horrors of tenement life in New York. Riis, a Danish immigrant, had been working as a police reporter for The New York Tribune, a job that gave him intimate familiarity with Mulberry Bend, a vestige of Five Points, the most notorious slum in the city. Five Points had been partially razed and partially rehabilitated as a result of the Draft Riots of 1863.

But obviously there was plenty of misery to document. Riis’s opus, which famously includes pictures he took, was written with none of the detachment or objectivity that journalistic explorations of poverty are typically given today. The book is full of his harsh judgments of the Italians (the Italian’s “ignorance and unconquerable suspicion of strangers dig the pit into which he falls”), the Irish (“more unruly” in Riis’s view than the Italians), Jews and the Chinese, while he remains surprisingly less critical of blacks and women. (One of the most interesting data points in the book is a chart looking at tenement rents for white vs. black tenants, which shows rents in some cases lower for African-Americans because they were considered more desirable tenants than immigrants.)

Riis’s book was an immediate success and it had an enormous impact, spurring reform. Can contemporary work in this vein have the same sort of impact? How radically can it change people’s thinking? Some of you may have read “Invisible Child,” the five-part series in The Times last week on the life of a homeless family in Brooklyn. The photographer Ruth Fremson, who worked on that series, will weigh in on the project and its relationship to Riis’s legacy.

Here’s what she told me in an email about Riis’s impact on her own work: “Before I even knew what photojournalism was, I was inclined to correct whatever I perceived to be injustice, so Riis’ work resonated strongly for me when I first was introduced to it. Instead of being repelled by the dark subject matter I was fascinated by how images could be historical documents, instruments of change, proof of injustice and art objects simultaneously.”

Please join the discussion here tonight at 6:30, Eastern time.