Jacob Riis was a writer and photographer most famous for his work, How the Other Half Lives. The book described the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in New York City tenement houses. Riis decided to write the book after working on the police beat at The Brooklyn News. There, he began to witness the full extent of the poor conditions in the city’s slums.
Riis was one of the first photographers in the United States to use flash photography, which allowed him to capture the poorly lit places he documented on Mulberry Street and other impoverished areas throughout the city.