Alex Goreing

May 3, 1894 – May 26, 1914

“5 Cents a Spot”

Social Reform

Vocation: Carpenter, later a “Muckraking” Journalist and a social documentary photographer.

Background: Education: apprenticeship as a carpenter in Denmark Religion: Catholic Relationships: He was a good natured person, and was loved

by his family and friends. His sister died when he was about 20. He loved his wife and many children very much. Riis was a close acquaintance of Theodore Roosevelt.

Defining moment: After seeing all the poverty and bad conditions for the poor in America that he himself had suffered through before becoming a journalist for the New York Tribune, he decided that he wanted to improve these. When Magnesium flash powder came around(allowing Riis to take photographs in low light), he rushed to the tenement slums and began taking pictures, with the purpose of exposing them to the public(usually as slideshows).

Contribution: How the Other Half Lives , a book containing many of the pictures he took, was almost like a “Tour of the Slums” for its readers, and stirred up momentum for sanitary reform.

www.richmondhillhistory.org www.nytimes.com www.npr.org www.boisestate.edu