How the Other Half Looks: The Lower East Side and the Afterlives of Images

How New York’s Lower East Side inspired new ways of seeing America

New York City's Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the "other half," was also a crucible for experimentation in photography, film, literature, and visual technologies. Sara Blair traces the career of the Lower East Side as a place where image-makers, writers, and social reformers tested new techniques for apprehending America—and their subjects looked back, confronting the means us...