Exploring Theories of Power and Viewership through the Lens of Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives
My first college paper I’m posting on here! This was my final paper for my Politics on Camera seminar, a class that I really enjoyed taking. The coolest part of the entire paper writing process was that the archives at my school had an ORIGINAL copy of the book How the Other Half Lives in their collections and I got to spend about an hour (with gloves, a styrofoam cradle, and weighted string of course) looking through it. It was super sick — my BeReal for that day is awesome. Anyways, the assignment for this paper was to assemble an archive around a case where photography/videography and politics interacted and to analyze that case through the lens of the work of three of the theorists we read over the course of the class.
Introduction
Less than 50 years after its invention, activists began using photography as a tool to call attention to atrocities and hopefully improve the lives of others. Jacob Riis was one of those activists, using his flash photographs to show Americans, especially the New York elite, the dirty and dangerous conditions of the nation’s ever-growing immigrant population. In 1890, Riis published his first book: How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the tenements of New York, pairing his graphic descriptions of the problems immigrants faced with photographs and illustrations of photographs he took himself.[1] How the Other Half Lives was a sensation, widely read and reviewed by newspapers across the country.[2] This essay will look at the work of three theorists that examine spectatorship, archives, and images of suffering — Rodney Carter’s 2006 paper “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence,” Roland Barthes’s 1980 book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, and Ariella Azoulay’s 2008 book The Civil Contract of Photography. How do the photos in Riis’s book, its text, and its newspaper reviews reflect their ideas of how to analyze images and how power is displayed in archives?
Background
The population demographics of the United States changed drastically in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.[3] From 1880–1914, more than 20 million European immigrants alone crossed the Atlantic in search of a better life. An average of 650,000 people arrived each year, settling in cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest.[4] Most immigrants worked in low-paying, unregulated factory jobs.[5] As a result, many of them lived in low-cost, sordid, overcrowded tenements where diseases easily spread and in neighborhoods, like New York City’s Lower East Side, where crime was also rampant.
Jacob Riis emigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1870 and worked at various jobs before becoming a police reporter at the New York Tribune and later a journalist at the Evening Sun.[6] Riis was a pioneer in using flash powder to provide light for his interior photographs.[7] He also changed the way that artists portrayed the poor, depicting poverty as it really was — difficult and tough to live through — instead of the traditional “sentimental” view.[8] How the Other Half Lives’s vivid description of the living conditions of America’s poor. directly influenced the rise of “muckraking” journalism.[9] Although an immigrant himself, Riis still had more privilege than the ethnic groups he reported on, as evidenced by the framing of his photographs and tone of his writing about them.
The Photos in How the Other Half Lives
The photos Riis chose to include in his book exemplify Carter’s idea of silences and distortion through an archive. Carter argues that because it is impossible for an archive to document the voice of every group and every aspect of a culture, “Inevitably, there are distortions, omissions, erasures, and silences in the archive. Not every story is told” (Carter, 216). No archive can ever truly be objective because it can never truly represent every single experience — there are always experiences that archivists, either purposefully or accidentally, leave out. The spectator can see the distortions in the archive in how Riis portrays each of the ethnic groups he documents. For example, there is only one photo of a Black person in the book entitled “A Black-and-Tan Dive in ‘Africa.’” Instead of being at work, with their family, or even begging for money on the street, the man is at a bar drinking and presumably gambling in a place Riis calls “the worst of the desperately bad” (Riis, 156). By only including an image of a Black person engaging in “immoral” or “lazy” behavior, Riis is implying that this behavior is not only representative of the larger population, but also how Black people were spending their time (especially because the caption around the image focuses on the gambling problem Riis sees). Thus, through the archive, Riis distorts the public’s view of Black Americans in New York City. Furthermore, there is a “silence” because there are no positive images of Black people, no portrayal of their hard work and contributions to their community.
Carter argues that this singular representation, in this case not only of Black people, but the other ethnic groups in the book, is harmful because “numerous commentators have identified a link between archives and memory… archival silences result in societal memory being compromised” (Carter, 220). When present-day viewers look back at the time period Riis was living and working in, they can only base their knowledge of immigrants living in the slums of New York City on the documents of that time. When there is only one narrative of any group, that biased portrayal inevitably becomes the accepted one. Carter goes on to write that these gaps in memory are especially notable when “the record only reflects the viewpoint of the powerful” (Carter, 221). When those in power are documenting the oppressed, the cultural perception of that silenced group is what those in power want the public to believe.
Although, like Carter, Barthes would also analyze the content of the images, he would focus more on how the photographs represent his ideas of “studium,” “punctum,” and “unary images.” According to Barthes, the studium is an “average affect, almost from a certain training” and that is “the order of liking, not of loving” (Barthes, 26–27). The studium is the feeling of general interest in a photograph, especially one showing someone suffering, that society has conditioned someone to feel. In sharp contrast to the studium is the punctum, an “accident which pricks [him]” or a “detail that attracts [him]…[whose] mere presence changes [his] reading, that [he] is looking at a new photograph, marked in [his] eyes with a higher value” (Barthes, 27, 42). The punctum is a small detail that one cannot help but focus on and one that makes the viewer look at the photo again with a new perspective. A photo that has a punctum thus has a higher value than one composed entirely of studium because it makes the viewer spend more time on and become more invested in that photograph. Barthes writes that for him to give an example of a punctum would be “to give [himself] up” (Barthes, 43). Unlike the studium, the photographer cannot intentionally have a punctum in their photograph because it is highly variable and personal.
For instance, in the photograph “Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement– ‘Five Cents a Spot,’” the studium, or what the society has trained the viewer to react to, is the general squalor of the room itself or the lodgers in their cramped spaces. These general aspects of the photograph, to Barthes, are not as arresting. They do not make the viewer care about the photograph for longer than they are seeing it. A punctum in this image could be the hat on the hook on the wall who’s ownership is unknown or the pots and pans on the shelf despite there being little room to cook.
The Text of How the Other Half Lives
The text in the book also reflects Carter’s theory of how power appears in archives. He writes that “the powerful in society are typically aligned with the state and its apparatus…these powerful groups create the records” (Carter, 217). The people who create records are often the ones who are privileged enough to spend their time documenting and archiving. Riis was able to take photographs because he was a reporter for the police and then for a larger publication–the survival and popularity of Riis’s photographs themselves prove Carter’s argument. The name of the book itself also reflects this dynamic; the “other half” that Riis is documenting is not the half that is reading his book, but the half who has either been ignorant of or complicit in creating these conditions. Thus, even the title of the book shows the power dynamic between the documentor/archivist (because Riis assembled the book himself) and the documented.
Carter would look at how Riis also distorts the reader’s view of immigrants through the text of the book. Riis’s writing is frequently biased against the ethnic groups he writes about. About Chinese immigrants, he writes that “the police will tell you would rather gamble than eat any day, and they have ample experience to back them…He is by nature as clean as the cat, which he resembles in his traits of cruel cunning, and savage fury when aroused (Riis, 94, 97). About Italians, Riis writes that in “His soul is in [gambling] from the moment the cards are on the table, and very frequently his knife is in it too before the game is ended. No Sunday has passed in New York since “the Bend” became a suburb of Naples without one or more of these murderous affrays coming to the notice of the police” (Riis, 53). Riis does not include any quotes or opinions from these groups–in fact, most of the dialogue between Riis and a white, more wealthy individuals who are aid workers. In doing so, he enacts a kind of silence Carter writes “has been called ‘simple and perfect,’ where the individual or group is denied the ability to speak, to make a statement, to voice their opinion” (Carter, 218). Carter would argue that Riis’s denial reflects the power dynamic in the archive because he has the power to omit their voices and only have his perspective of these groups survive.
Even when immigrants’ voices do appear in the archive, they still do not have the same authority of Riis’s voice. Carter writes that “silencing also occurs when an individual speaks but they have no authority behind them. This results in…the words [not being able] to achieve their desired effect or fulfill their purpose” (Carter, 218). Although a disempowered individual might be able to speak, if they do not have the same power behind them they can still be silenced. Riis’s inclusion of quotes from immigrants attest to this lack of authority. Whenever he includes their words, they are written in phonetic English–one Chinese man asks Riis “S’ppose your wifee bad, you no lickee her?” (Riis, 99). In another conversation, Riis writes that a newsboy told him “We wuz six” (Riis, 201). Carter would argue that by having these quotes instead of making their content into indirect speech, Riis is purposefully trying to delegitimize their voices. Compared to Riis, who speaks perfect English, the other immigrants sound almost vulgar and uneducated–further making the archive less objective. Thus, although Riis does include their voices in his archive, because they are less accessible to the average reader and thus have less authority, they are still being silenced.
The verbal content of How the Other Half Lives demonstrates Riis’s failure to make what Azoulay calls “emergency claims.” Azoulay writes “statements of horror,” or photographs of traumatic events, turn into “emergency claims” when they “take place in conditions that turn it into a situation that is thus designated as an emergency, the termination of which requires action to be taken” (Azoulay, 198). When a horror occurs in a certain context, whether it be cultural, historical, or otherwise, it can become an “emergency” that takes precedence in terms of receiving aid. Emergency claims are “open for negotiation,” and testify to “three facts: that a disaster exists; that it is an exception to the rule, one that necessitates immediate action in order to terminate it; and that there is someone who wants to assume the position that allows immediate action to be taken in order to terminate it” (Azoulay, 198–199). What constitutes an “emergency” rather than a “horror” is always changing and highly subjective, although there are still main characteristics.
Azoulay would argue that two of the three conditions to make an emergency have been satisfied. The first is that the disaster exists. Riis writes in the first chapter of his book that in terms of the problems with overcrowding in the tenements, “The climax had been reached” (Riis, 13). Riis agrees that a disaster exists, and so satisfies the first condition.
However, Riis only partly satisfies the next condition. Many of the captions of his photographs, such as “Sewing and Starving in an Elizabeth Street Attic,” “A Flat in the Pauper Barracks, West Thirty-eighth Street, with all its Furniture,” and “A Market Scene in the Jewish Quarter” are descriptions of every-day places. Although one might argue that the horrible conditions are an exception to the rule, Azoulay would respond that Riis’s neutral tone in naming these photographs shows how he is implying that what is happening there is an ordinary occurrence–these conditions are the “rule.” Unlike the first part of the second condition, Riis fulfills the second. At the end of the book, Riis gives a warning to his viewer. He writes that “The gap between the classes in which it surges, unseen, unsuspected by the thoughtless, is widening day by day. No tardy enactment of law, no political expedient, can close it. Against all other dangers our system of government may offer defence and shelter; against this not” (Riis, 296). Riis argues that the worsening conditions of the poor will not be able to go on much longer–that action does need to be taken immediately. Thus, Riis satisfies only half of the second condition Azoulay presents as necessary for the transformation of a statement of horror into an emergency claim.
Like the first condition, Riis fulfills the third requirement for this transformation by telling the reader about the people who want to help improve the lives of the immigrants he writes about. In the chapter 25, entitled “How the Case Stands,” after summing up the facts of immigrants’ living conditions, he presents three ways to deal with the problems tenements have been causing: by housing laws, renovating the old tenements, or demolishing the tenements and building new housing (Riis, 283). He then writes that “There is abundant evidence, on the other hand, that it can be made to pay to improve and make the most of the worst tenement property, even in the most wretched locality…Backed by a strong and steady sentiment, such as these pioneers [landlords who invested in their tenements] have evinced, that would make it the personal business of wealthy owners with time to spare to look after their tenants, the law would be able in a very short time to work a salutary transformation in the worst quarters,” (Riis, 285, 287). Azoulay would argue that Riis is not asserting that there is someone who currently wants to help (he uses the example of a landlord who did improve the condition of the tenement she owned from a few years earlier). However, she would say that Riis’s writing the book documenting the conditions of tenements, laying out a plan for action, and persuading his wealthy audience to take action would be enough to satisfy this third condition. Riis is the “someone who wants to assume the position that allows immediate action to be taken” the horror (Azoulay, 199) because he has assumed the position by authoring the book.
Book Reviews of How the Other Half Lives
Contemporary reviews reflect Barthes’ theories of the punctum, the studium, and unary images. According to Barthes, a photo is “unary when it emphatically transforms ‘reality’ without doubling it…[there is] no punctum–the literal can traumatize–but no disturbance… the photograph can ‘shout,’ not wound” (Barthes, 41). Unary images show what is happening, but there is nothing more interesting beyond the “literal.” Because there is no punctum, nothing that makes the viewer reconsider the photograph and engage more deeply with it, to Barthes, it is worth less. Because unary images are full of studium (Barthes also calls them “banal”) and there are no details that can deeply move the viewer, it can “shout,” or try to demand attention and interest, but cannot “wound,” or be successful at doing so (Barthes, 41).
Although most of the reviews do mention Riis’s photographs in the book, they are rarely the primary focus. To Barthes, this phenomena would be the perfect example of how unary images fail to inspire interest in photographs. As one reviewer wrote, “one is more and more impressed as he turns its vivid pages with the conviction that the pictures therein presented are true to life” (review 3). The words “impressed” and “vivid” are key–the reviewer likes the images, and even names a few of them later in the review, but does not find anything in particular that would “wound” him. Furthermore, the “conviction” the reviewer feels that the photos he is seeing are transformations of reality reflect Barthes’s idea that unary images “double,” or convey reality, without doing anything more to make the viewer invested. One reviewer from (review 4) does not even mention the photographs in his review. Another writes that the book “is abundantly illustrated from negatives of the odd, the out-of-the-way, and characteristic sights and scenes he has himself caught with his camera” (review 6). Barthes would argue that the words such “odd” and “out-of-the-way” indicate that the viewer has a general interest in the photos, but again, by not mentioning any details from the photographs, has not been wounded. Barthes would argue that all of these reviews are evidence that Riis’s photos “shouted,” and perhaps traumatized, but were unary images that ultimately did not “wound” their viewers.
The book reviews of How the Other Half Lives illustrate many of Azoulay’s arguments about framing and the need for a sympathetic public for an emergency claim to form. Although Riis helped “generalize” his own work with the text in the book and the captions of the photos, some of the reviews tried to frame the suffering of immigrants living in tenements as well. One reviewer wrote “But the tenement-house life of New York is very far from being all vice. To describe it faithfully one would have to tell “a story of thousands of devoted lives, laboring earnestly to make the most of their scant opportunities for good” (review 5). Azoulay would argue that by shifting the focus away from the terrible living conditions immigrants lived in towards how the immigrants can be happy in the tenements, the reviewer is trying to negate the statement of horror Riis is presenting to the reader. Furthermore, another reviewer wrote that the book “is a careful, comprehensive, and systematic presentation of a thesis with illustrations…from beginning to end is an indictment of the tenement system as it exists at present in New York” (review 6). Azoulay would argue that by using the words “thesis,” “illustrations,” and “indictment of the tenement system,” the reviewer is framing the suffering of immigrants not as an issue that necessitates immediate action, but rather as something the reader should study before returning back to their normal lives. Thus, the emergency claim has failed to materialize–the reviewer does not feel any responsibility to the immigrants besides looking at the images of their injury.
Other reviewers were an example of another necessary element of an emergency claim–a sympathetic public. She writes that “The spectator must have a special interest” in order for them to help those who are making the emergency claim (Azoulay, 201). Many reviewers were sympathetic to the immigrants Riis discusses in the book, with one writing “For very shame and horror [politicians who read the book] would make [government funded lodging houses] mandatory without delay” (review 2). Another called it “disheartening to read” (review 3). However, Azoulay would still argue that the emergency claim has not been successful because the viewer, although sympathetic, is not “already be prepared to turn herself into the civil addressee…a position that requires a deviation from the side to which she belongs” (Azoulay, 201). The viewer must also be predisposed to wanting to help the photographed person, which is difficult because oppressors often position citizens, or the people that can help, in opposition to the oppressed.” Many of the reviewers, although sympathetic to the cause, did not feel inspired to take action to help immigrants. The closest one review was to becoming the civil adresse was writing that to “to wake up some of these sleeping people… [the magazine should] put Riis’s book into the hands of every one of our readers” (review 5). Azoulay would note that the focus is not on helping improve the lives of the immigrants, but raising awareness among other people who might help. Thus, there is no emergency claim–there is no one who is willing to take matters into their own hands.
Another issue with the reviewers is that they accepted the generalizations. Azoulay writes “When photographs are being used to illustrate a type of situation rather than to testify to a singular event, it is a sure sign that a disaster has become chronic” (Azoulay, 208). When viewers see photos of these events as representative of a larger issue, it means the ruling power has successfully numbed the public to the pain of the people they are harming. This argument fits into Azoulay’s larger claim that statements of horror fail to become emergency claims fail when “when the horror transmitted by these statements fails to appear as something that needs to be stopped immediately” (Azoulay, 203). The language of the reviewers shows how the statements of horror in Riis’s images failed to become emergency claims. As one reviewer writes “In turning the leaves of Mr. Riis’s book we find a chapter on Chinatown, full of interest, but which we have no time to investigate” (review 5). Azoulay would argue that, in this case, an emergency claim has failed to materialize. Because the reviewer is willing to skip over an entire chapter for the sake of time, he must believe that the issue of anti-Chinese discrimination is not urgent. Another review wrote that the value of the book “is that having revealed the evil, [Riis] is ready with a plan of remedy” (review 2). Instead of entering into the contract himself and taking action, the reviewer is relying on others to put in the work
Ultimately, Azoulay would argue that the reason many reviewers did not feel an urgency to act is because they have accepted the generalizations and prepackaged narratives surrounding immigrants. She writes that if the viewer simply accepts the transformation of the “emergency claim into a generalized statement, the addressee relinquishes her civil point of view and adopts one that has been created by the ruling power, the point of view from which this emergency claim has been contextualized” (Azoulay, 201). If a viewer accepts this prepackaged narrative, they inevitably do not realize the urgency of the specific situation. It is clear from the reviews that their authors have uncritically embraced the book’s narratives. One reviewer wrote that he was convinced that “the author is speaking of that which he knows and testifies of that which he has seen… It is well for us to know exactly how we are situated” (review 3). Azoulay would argue that this reviewer has relinquished their own point of view (marking the failure of the statement of horror’s transformation) and instead has completely accepted the context that Riis provides.
Conclusion
The photos and text in Riis’s book How the Other Half Lives and its book reviews reveal power dynamics of immigrants in America. All three theorists mentioned in this paper–Carter, Barthes, and Azoulay–would analyze this archive and its parts differently. Carter would talk about distortions in the archive and the power dynamic between the archivist and the documented. Meanwhile, Barthes would look at the combination of studium and punctum in the photos and how the contemporary analyses of the photos show how they are an example of unary images. Azoulay would look at the images in terms of how they fail to turn statements of horror into emergency claims. The contradiction between what the theorists would say the results of the publication of How the Other Half Lives would be as opposed to the actual outcome is fascinating to me. Because so many of Riis’s photos were full of studium and no photograph in particular “wounded” any reviewer, Barthes would argue that the photographs would not have an impact. Azoulay would agree–the failure of the photographs to make emergency claims and the general lack of urgency in the tones of the reviews would mean that no action to aid the disaster would happen. Carter would also agree, especially considering that someone in a position of power created the documents and the archive itself. However, we know from history that How the Other Half Lives had an immense impact on the lives of thousands of immigrants and their descendents. The book was the reason for the first major piece of legislation about housing practices.[10] Today, students learn about Riis as one of the main reasons that the overcrowded tenements they see in his photographs no longer exist. So why did Riis’s photographs succeed when now, other images of immigrants suffering do not inspire the same action?
To respond to Carter, I think he does not acknowledge the fact that even if the people in power distort an archive, it does not mean that those images cannot still be impactful. I also think that Azoulay, when thinking about images being generalizations, considers that even images that represent larger problems can still have impacts. Ultimately, I think that the time period in which Riis worked enabled his success. For instance, to respond to Barthes, one reason why Riis’s unary photographs worked might have been because the studium, the cultural expectation of dirty houses and buildings when looking at photos of immigrants did not exist yet. Riis’s photographs were a novelty–the technology he was using and the concept of putting photographs in a book were relatively new. Furthermore, a reason why photos of immigrants at the Southern Border or trying to enter Europe from Syria might be because of the sheer amount of content we see every day in our world. With a slower news cycle and less awareness of the issues in every part of the world, it would have been easier for Riis’s readers to become galvanized and focus their energy on the sole issue of tenements in New York. Ultimately, with how aware we are of global events and how fatigued we are as a population (a result of living in a 24-hour news cycle), we may never see a book like How the Other Half Lives inspire action in the same way.[11] Thus, activists must think of creative ways to raise awareness of societal issues and their solutions in order to effect change.
Endnotes:
[1]: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacob-Riis
[2]: Ibid; Capitalizing on the book’s success and the public’s desire to help immigrants, Riis went around America lecturing for years after the book’s publication.
[3]: Although historians disagree on what decades constituted each “wave” of immigration to America, they all note a sharp increase in the number of people coming in the 1870s and 1880s.
[4]: https://www.prb.org/resources/trends-in-migration-to-the-u-s/#:~:text=The%20third%20wave%2C%20between%201880,States%20had%2075%20million%20residents; https://web.northeastern.edu/visualizingeastie/waves-of-immigration/
[5]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2760060/
[6]: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacob-Riis; Jacob Riis was born in 1849 in Ribe, Denmark, the son of a schoolteacher and one of 15 children.
[7]: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/jacob-riis?all/all/all/all/0 ; https://www.britannica.com/technology/flash-powder
[8]: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/jacob-riis?all/all/all/all/0
[9]: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacob-Riis ; https://www.britannica.com/topic/muckraker; another notable work in the genre is Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle
[10]: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacob-Riis
[11]: There could be an entire other essay dedicated to Susan Sontag’s idea of image fatigue and why Riis’s photos were successful as opposed to comparable modern images of immigrant suffering.
Bibliography:
Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, 2008
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Translated in 1981
“Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence” by Rodney Carter, from Archivaria, 2006
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the tenements of New York, 1890
Review 1:
New Books: THE CITY — THE HOPE OF DEMOCRACY COUDERT’S ADDRESSES …
Howe
The Catholic World, A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science (1865–1906); Mar 1, 1906; 82, 492; American Periodicals
pg. 827
Review 2:
Our Book Table.
New York Evangelist (1830–1902); Jan 15, 1891; 62, 3; American Periodicals pg. 1
Review 3:
No Title
The Independent … Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, His…Jan 1, 1891; 43, 2196; American Periodicals
pg. 19
Review 4:
BOOKS ON SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
The Literary World; a Monthly Review of Current Literature (1870–1904); Dec 20, 1890; 21, 26; American Periodicals
pg. 492
Review 5:
THE BOOK.1: THE BACK ALLEYS. “MULBERRY BEND.” A JEWISH MARKET. A …
Christian Union (1870–1893); Nov 27, 1890; 42, 22; American Periodicals pg. 706
Review 6:
THE NEWEST BOOKS
The Book Buyer (1867–1903); Nov 1, 1890; 7, 10; American Periodicals pg. 433
