son of a school-teacher/editor
self-taught
1870 – moves to US
1873 – works at New York News Association
1874 – hired as editor of South Brooklyn News
1878 – hired as police-reporter for the Tribune
1888 – begins photographing New York City slums to illustrate his reformist articles and lectures
1890 – publishes How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements
1898 –stops taking photographs
1902 – publishes The Battle with the Slum
Riis, Jacob A. Jacob Riis. London and New York: Phaidon, 2001