How The Other Half Lives

Riis was among the first in the United States to conceive of photographic images as instruments for social change; he was also among the first to use flash powder to photograph interior views, and his book How the Other Half Lives was one of the earliest to employ halftone reproduction successfully. -- Lisa Hostetler

Essential reading for every American.

Jacob Riis, a police reporter and an immigrant himself, was intimately acquainted with the squalid living conditions in New York's tenements...