Immigration abuse never ends. Jacob Riis: Concerned Photographer

“Slept In That Cellar Four Years,” 1890-92

“Slept in the cellar (of a Ludlow Street tenement)

where the water was ankle deep on the mud floor”

View more work -and hear an excellent NPR audio clip- by the great Danish-American documentary photojournalist. He was one of the first to use “flash,” (first introduced in Germany in 1887). Riis cast the mold for what a “Concerned Photographer,” is, and launched a century of relevant, motivating and society-changing “witnessing.”

Editor’s Note:

For more images and audio clip: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91981589

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Roof Cam: Borderlands Suite

Roof Cam #8, El Paso – June 2008

I’m driving around my city. I’m moving my operation a little to the north of where I am now, north of the border, north of the borderline, north of my reality. I’m already feeling separation depression. So I drive around my turf of 30 years. I don’t have to look anymore, I know the bricks, the cracks, the fault lines. I’ve shot them a million times and re-shot them. I stick the camera out the sunroof and let the car become part of the camera. The car is the camera. and I tour my myth. This is between me and it, not meant for others. All of my work is getting there now, it’s between me and it.

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