you're looking at a time lapse video recorded by the library of congress showing the process of constructing the exhibition jacob Riis revealing how the other half lives we visit the exhibit in the library's thomas jefferson building to learn about the life of the danish-born journalist social reformer and photographer at the beginning of the the exhibit we've chosen three very famous photographs from the lexicon of jacob Riis and to the left is perhaps his most famous photograph called bandit's roost and it was in the middle of an area called mulberry bend which was a section of milbury street near baxter street that became a particular cause celeb for Riis in terms of urban reform and he eventually would succeed in working with municipal authorities to demolish mulberry bend and replace it with a park which is another story that we tell deeper into the exhibit with original items again the paradox about Riis is that he himself said that he was a photographer after a fashion in other words that he wasn't a real photographer he used the camera for very few years less than 10 years and he only took about 300 pictures about a third of which were like family snapshots and you know of other things that are not what we not of historic importance um the most his most famous picture today is bandit's roost which shows a couple of tufts uh italian tufts wearing bowler hats in fact that picture was sort of copied by martin scorsese in in movie the gangs of new york so it's a kind of iconic image when he first had the idea to use photographs to illustrate the slums and that was in 1887 he reached out to a friend who was a photographer and he found two photographers who wanted to who were interested in flash flash photography was the reason he had the idea to even use photographs at all he had was a writer he was a journalist he was writing a daily newspaper about the conditions in the sum he read in the newspaper in 1887 that there was this new invention of flash powder that could illuminate the darkness and he said aha so he worked with these two other photographers who were serious amateurs who were interested in flash they were interested in the technology and among their photographs is bandit's roost which was actually taken with a stereo stereoscopic camera which has two lenses so there are actually two images of vanda throughs but it's the right side which has those two tufts in the bowlers that's the famous image it's again as another irony that reese's most famous image was not actually taken by him but the flash photographs what i think is the most important of the flash photographs is one called five cents a spot and what it's demonstrating are people that paid five cents or seven cents a night to have temporary lodging inside a tenement house where they weren't living but they would come just to sleep for the night and those people on the floor paid five cents and the people up on the shelf paid seven there was a law in new york that you had to provide a bed of some kind an independent bed for someone and the lowest price you could charge was seven cents so the title indicates to the viewer that this was illegal uh shelter and reese took the picture um that that was taken by him not by the other amateurs he took the picture with a member of the sanitary police who were essentially raiding the place and saying this you know get up and out this is illegal so entering this room which only had the slightest bit of light from a coal stove that was providing heat for the room Riis entered with the police set up his camera essentially set off an explosion which sounded like a gun you know a boom with smoke and fire and what's captured in the picture is the faces some people are still sleeping and other people have been aroused and look sort of stricken for good reason by the circumstance the picture in his description of the scene in his book he says there were 13 people in that room tiny little room including an infant a screaming infant so it's a horrific scene and he used that picture to try to enforce to try to arouse authorities to enforcing the laws about these lodging houses and he describes that in his book so that is a fantastic example of one of Riis 's flash photographs creating a very powerful portrait of inhumane conditions picture like that pictures like that have been criticized for essentially victimizing his subjects that he came in that there was no consent that he scared these people to death and that they look at and that that is a criticism of modern criticism today of these flash photographs it wasn't it was not his intention but it is from a contemporary point of view a problem