Essay Database

The Mirror with a Memory 1.<Tab/> Jacob Riis, an emigrant from Scandinavia, experienced firsthand the poverty in New York slums. After moving from odd job to odd job he found himself begging for food on the street and immersed in the peasantry of "The Bend", the nickname for the slum neighborhood in which he lived, Riis became a reporter. His specific goal was to prompt the public into action on social …

…her family), rather than the everyday life. These photos are biased towards the photographers wants. Finally, the authors discuss how Mathew Brady, a Civil War photographer, would photograph scenes of dead bodies to convey the bloodshed, even if he had to bring the dead bodies to the scene himself. All of the examples speak to the authors' assertion that Riis' photographs were those "of a partisan" because they were purposeful, and deliberate in their content.