… untitled (1950s)

… untitled (1958)

Some landscapes by Sheron Rupp. Rupp in conversation with photographer Susan Worsham:

Untitled  

Fulvio Rinaldi（Italian, b.1949）

Jacob A. Riis (May 3, 1849 - 1914) was a Danish writer, social reformer and photographer, famous for his spotlight on conditions in city ghettos in the US at the end of the 19th century. Riis was born in Ribe, but emigrated to the US at age 21, and spent many years struggling to hold down jobs and earn a living. He, in other words, had first-hand experience with poverty and immigrant communities…

Riis eventually became a reporter in New York and began the work he is remembered for today: A type of muckraking journalism, eventually published in book form as How the Other Half Lives (1890). He included a few photos in there, but used mostly woodcuts as illustrations. In his second book, Children of the Poor (1892) the photos were more plentiful and also more posed.

Riis lectured extensively about children’s conditions in big cities, and eventually caught the attention of Theodore Roosevelt who enlisted Riis’ help in cleaning up some of the corruption and mismanagement of New York’s police force and other public functions.

Riis has become considered a great photographer after his death, esp. after Alexander Alland reprinted and republished the original plates in the 1940s, and museums in the US and Denmark regularly exhibit his pictures - for instance the City Museum of New York and the Jacob A Riis Museum in his original hometown, Ribe, Denmark…

Edward Keating. Sayre, Oklahoma. 2007