nos invita a pensar que el mundo representado pasa a ser un contenido nuevo del mundo en el que las

fotografías han sido tomadas, de ahí que forma y contenido sean indisociables. Las grandes fotografías
de la inmigración humana de Riis a finales del siglo XIX serían la cara visible y comprometida que
habría adoptado el medio fotográfico en un momento de madurez técnica: el surgimiento de la placa seca
de gelatino bromuro y el flash de magnesio, que supusieron un salto cualitativo respecto a su pasado
inmediato (permitió la obtención de imágenes instantáneas en lugares carentes de luz natural).
La interdependencia de texto e imagen en la obra de Riis sería tanto un factor de fecundidad (las
imágenes apoyan el texto) como de controversia (el texto trata de acaparar el valor de las imágenes).
Desde el punto de vista técnico, el fenómeno de la representación estaría también relacionado con el de
la difusión y reproducción y, desde el punto de vista del contenido, resultaría manifiesto que el valor de
las imágenes habría sido determinado por los contextos en los cuales se hizo presente: por un lado, la
proyecciones con linterna mágica, y por otro, su difusión en la prensa escrita, gracias a la mejora de los
procedimientos de impresión y reproducción de las imágenes junto al texto (fotomecánica), que
facilitaron la aparición de nuevos géneros periodísticos como la fotohistoria, el fotoensayo o el [ 29 ] Las
dos mitades de Jacob Riis
reportaje fotográfico. En Riis, este acontecimiento resulta de especial relevancia porque Cómo vive la
otra mitad está considerada una de las primeras obras publicadas mediante el recién implementado
proceso de los halftones, que permitía la combinación de texto e imagen fotográfica en libros y
publicaciones periódicas.
Por otra parte, el redescubrimiento de su corpus fotográfico en los años cuarenta (lo que hoy conocemos
como la Jacob A. Riis Collection del Museum of the City of New York) y el modo tan vertiginoso en
que Riis entró a formar parte en la historia del medio como fotógrafo documental a raíz de la
divulgación que llevaron a cabo autores como Alexander Alland y Beaumont Newhall, entre otros —en
el momento de máxima efervescencia de las revistas ilustradas y de proyectos fotográficos como la Farm
Security Administration, que marcaron un hito en el documentalismo fotográfico, cuyos fotógrafos
anhelaban encontrar precedentes históricos a los que asociar su trabajo—, ha coadyuvado a generar una
visión controvertida de la figura de Riis, cuyo estatus debe ser revisado a la luz de la investigación más
reciente, que señala la alteración o manipulación que sufrieron las imágenes divulgadas con respecto a
sus versiones originales con el fin de ser exhibidas en círculos artísticos o los errores de atribución de los
que adolecen muchas de ellas, dada la doble faceta de Riis de fotógrafo y coleccionista. Así pues, este
ensayo estudia también el proceso historiográfico del que Riis ha sido objeto con el propósito de
recuperar el mérito de su obra en calidad de pionero de la fotografía documental de los barrios bajos.

Palabras clave
American Memory, American Studies, americanización; comunicación visual; Crane, Stephen, 1871-
1900. Maggie, a girl of the streets. “An Experiment in Misery”; Estudios Culturales; fotografía cándida;
fotografía documental social; fotoperiodismo; literatura americana; naturalismo literario; Nueva York
(New York City); periodismo muckraker.[ 31 ]
Las dos mitades de Jacob Riis
Abstract and Key Words [English]

T his essay is a critical study of the work of the journalist, photographer and social reformer Jacob

A. Riis, which is analyzed from two points of view: the literary tradition to which his texts belong,
whose style is indebted to the core values of American democracy, and the technical evolution of
photography, for which his work has become an inescapable point of reference. These two perspectives
converge in an innovative manner in his work of greatest impact, How the Other Half Lives, a mixed
media literary and photographic work which constituted a milestone in the use of photography as social
document and literature as an expression of commitment to resolving the crisis of modern times.
From the point of view of content, I take the question of photography as a theme of its own, and
therefore established the non-photographic criterion of the data on human migration and poverty in large
cities during late nineteenth century. The perspective adopted considers the double dimension of Riis’s
work based on the assumption that these must be assessed jointly, but can also be studied separately.
Regarding the literary work, the art of writing has wider margins in the United States than those usually
assigned to the study of “national literary history”. Hence, it is necessary to define the genre of Jacob
Riis’ work - alfway between realistic or naturalistic fiction and muckraker journalism - and examine the
degree to which it is embedded in the history of American literature. Given the civic-political dimension
he adopts, I associate his purpose (the improvement of living conditions in New York) with the
emergence of the rationale for the founding of the city in American literature and the ambivalent
relationship of [ 32 ] www.cuadernosartesanos.org
“intellectual versus the city”, especially after the social impact of overcrowding in the metropolises due
to diverse migration phenomena, and the rise of industrial capitalism in the context of post-Civil War
America.
Riis’s photographic work is subjected to the same type of assessment applied in the literary field.
Although photographs were merely a support for Riis’s texts and have been criticized for their lack of
technical expertise, a serious assessment of his work compared to other contemporary photographers
cannot be omitted. Riis’s photographic work invites us to appreciate the fact that the history of
photography to some extent coincides with the history of photographic technique. This coincidence
would serve us to go beyond the obvious fact that the evolution of photography depends on the technical
means used to produce it. In Riis’s work there was a consolidation of technical advances that suggests
that the world represented becomes something distinct from the world in which the photographs were
taken. Riis’s photographs of human immigration in the late nineteenth century were the visible and
committed face that the photographic medium would adopt in a time of technical maturity: the
emergence of bromide gelatin dry plate and flash magnesium, which represented a quantum leap over
the immediate past (allowing instant pictures in places with no natural light). Hence the world
represented in these pictures and the techniques that make them possible are consubstantial, so that the
form and content of these photographs become inseparable.
The interdependence of text and image in Riis’s work would be both a factor of fertility (images support
the text) and controversy (the text aims to appropriate the value of the images). From the technical point
of view, the phenomenon of representation would also be related to distribution and reproduction and,
from the point of view of content, it is evident that the value of the image would have been determined
by its context: first, magic lantern projections, and then their dissemination in print, thanks to the
improvement of techniques for printing and reproduction of images alongside text (photomechanics),
which facilitated the emergence of new media genres such as the photostory, the photoessay or the
graphic report. In the case of Riis this event is especially relevant because How the Other Half Lives is
considered one of the first published works using the newly implemented process of halftone printing
(although it still coexisted with [ 33 ]
Las dos mitades de Jacob Riis
the Woodburytype), which allowed the combination of text and photographic images in books and
periodicals.
Moreover, the rediscovery of his photographic corpus in the 1940s (what is now known as the Jacob A.
Riis Collection of the Museum of the City of New York) and the dramatically sudden way in which Riis
was integrated into the history of the medium as a documentary photographer through exposure by
authors such as Alexander Alland and Beaumont Newhall, among others (during the rise of illustrated
press or pictorials and photographic projects, such as that of the Farm Security Administration (FSA),
which marked a milestone in documentary photography whose photographers longed to find historical
precedents for their work), has contributed to the generation of a controversial view of Riis, whose
status needs to be reviewed in the light of the latest research, which indicates alterations or manipula-
tions of the original images in order to present them in artistic circles, and errors of attribution due to
Riis’s dual role of photographer and collector. Thus, this essay also examines the historiographical
process that Riis’s work has undergone so as to recover his importance as a pioneer of documentary
photography of the slums.