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A 10 page research paper that investigates tenement life in New York City slums at the end of the nineteenth century, focusing on the photography of Jacob Riis, which exposed the deplorable conditions of that time. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
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10 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khriis.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
of independence and middle class prosperity. However, for many of these people arrival in the "land of opportunity" was the beginning of their personal nightmare, rather then the beginning of
new prosperity. For the most part, these immigrants found themselves laboring in sweatshops and living in tenement slums. Jacob Riis, an immigrant himself and a journalist, provided the impetus
for a social reform movement in the 1890s by photographing the deplorable conditions in which people existed in the slums of New York Citys Lower East Side. Jacob Augustus
Riis, at the age of 21, came to New York from Ribe, Denmark (Yochelson 16). For the next seven years, he experienced only occasional employment, before finding steady work at
the New York Tribune as a police reporter (Yochelson 16). His work documenting the tenements of New York City began as a series of exposes on crime. However, Riis
journalism soon evolved into a campaign for social reform, for the express purpose of addressing the squalid living conditions in tenement housing. Riis postulated that the squalor, degradation, as
well as the lack of healthy outlets and education for young people in the tenements provided the perfect environment for breeding criminal behavior (Yochelson 16). In 1888, Riis left
the Tribune to work for the Evening Sun, at which time he also began work on his first book concerning tenement life (Jacob Riis). At about the same time, Blitzlichtpulver,
that is flashlight powder, was invented in Germany in 1887. By becoming one of the first photographers to make use of flash powder, Riis was able to photograph dimly lit
areas in tenement housing, and he also, due to this invention, was able to photograph the slums at night. The New York Sun published twelve drawings that were based on
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