Jacob A. Riis: Photographer & Citizen

USA: Aperture, 1974. Book. Illus. by Riis, Jacob A.. Fair. Hardcover. First Printing. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 220 pages. Riis "took pictures to document and expose the everyday misery of the despairing and often unseen poor." - from Introduction. "The remarkable journalist and reformer Jacob Riis was the forerunner in America's great tradition of documentary photography. This book brings together for the first time a full selection of Riis's photographs and a detailed account of his extraordinary years with a camera... To Riis, an immigrant struggling to expose human misery in the slums of New York nearly a century ago, such other possibilities as art and self-expression were of no concern. He was a muckraking journalist, to whom fact was the 'mightiest lever', and he took up the camera only because it offered new firepower in his crusade for social justice. Self-taught, he became America's first true journalist-photographer - a pioneer in the use of flash and in obtaining entry to and photographing previously inaccessible slum dwellings." - from dust jacket. "The photographs are direct and penetrating, as raw as the sordid scenes which they so often represent." - Beaumont Newhall, in "History of Photography". Usual library markings. Average wear. Binding sound. A worthy reference copy of this unforgettable compilation..