Above: his “Three urchins huddling for warmth in window well on NY’s Lower East Side” (ca. 1889), found at Ordinary Finds.Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 - May 26, 1914), was a Danish American social reformer, muckraking journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for his dedication to using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City, which was the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography.
08 May 2010
"Three urchins huddling for warmth..."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I would simply have to take them home with me.
ReplyDeleteIt is worth noting, this is a posed photo, as were many of his wonderful body of work.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I suppose that's compatible with "using his photographic talents." Presumably they were real street urchins, at least, and not faked ones?
ReplyDeleteI doubt that this picture was posed. Larger, higher resolution versions show snow and ice perched precariously on the left boy's hat, coat sleeve and wrist. If the child had been awake, he'd have noticed and removed the cold stuff. Instead, asleep and unconscious, he didn't notice it, and left it where it fell on him.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that something that looks like snow and ice was placed in the scene or manipulated into the image during post-processing. The snow casts a shadow, a difficult effect to paint into a photo in 1889. And because it's so small and easily missed by the viewer, the effort wouldn't have seemed worth it to enhance the pathos of the scene. The apparent evidence of winter weather requires a close examination to find. It would have been more effective to insert it where it could be seen more easily. But what we see is the more subtle yet real evidence of snow and ice that fell on a sleeping child without human intervention.
With no other place to stay, these boys were really asleep in the gutter that the photographer found them in. And they didn't even own shoes. They wouldn't have wanted to go barefoot outdoors with snow on the streets, but with no shoes to wear, they had no choice.
Realizing the non-staged nature of this image makes the viewer realize that it's one of the most poignant photos of genuine and severe deprivation in American history.