Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - Rediscovering Jacob Riis: The Reformer, His Journalism, and His Photographs

Rediscovering Jacob Riis: The Reformer, His Journalism, and His Photographs
Rediscovering Jacob Riis The Reformer His Journalism and His Photographs
Author: Bonnie Yochelson, Daniel Czitrom
A provocative new illustrated history of the famed early chronicler of New York's immigrant poor, seen here as an opportunistic, camera-toting social reformer whose legacy lives on. — "I don't remember my mother or my aunts and uncles talking of their father as a photographer....In his letters?I have read most of them?he never mentions ...  more »?J. Riis Owre (grandson of Jacob Riis)

More than ninety years after his death, Jacob Riis maintains a stubbornly persistent hold on the American imagination. Remembered as a pioneering photographer, he was the first to document the state of New York's slums, publicizing in haunting photographs the plight of the urban poor at the height of European immigration to the city. But Riis confessed to being "no good at all as a photographer" and in recent years has been disparaged for racist views and political opportunism.

In Rediscovering Jacob Riis, Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom address the complex legacy of the pioneering social reformer. In a work of highly original scholarship, they reclaim Riis from the art camp, relocating him in the field of social and cultural history. Their provocative new book reveals Riis to be an inspired self-promoter who, although neither an original thinker nor a serious photographer, nevertheless framed the discussion of urban poverty in terms still relevant today.

Extensively illustrated with Riis's images, Rediscovering Jacob Riis is revisionist history at its best, as appealing to photographers, journalists, and social historians as it is to the general reader.
ISBN-13: 9781595581990
ISBN-10: 1595581995
Publication Date: 2/1/2008
Pages: 336
Rating:
  ?
0 stars, based on 0 rating
Publisher: New Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review


Genres:


Back to the Top ↑
By using this Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms of Use. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
US Patent Number 7,877,315 | Copyright © 2004 - 2024 PaperBackSwap.com. All Rights Reserved.