How the Other Half Lives

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How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York was a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant reporter, which was published in 1890. The work documented the squalid living conditions for people living in the extensive slums which then existed in New York City.

Publication of the work lead to wider public knowledge and sympathy for those living in the slums, however Riis was also criticised for the methods he used in creating his photographic exposé. For example, he illegally entered private residences and even accidentally started numerous fires through the use of then-primitive flash photography in the confined quarters of flammable tenement structures.

Riis's idea inspired Jack London to write a similar exposé on London's East End, most notably Whitechapel, called People of the Abyss.