Is Jacob Riis best described as a reformer?

Is Jacob Riis best described as a reformer? Or should his work be viewed as part of a ‘larger enterprise of surveillance, containment, and social control’?

You must refer to at least two primary sources in your response to your chosen question, which you should close-read to support or illustrate your argument.
Primary sources are the examples of visual culture we look at in this module – these can be images/ photographs/ artworks/ adverts/ films/ accompanying text etc. You can find these primary sources in various places in the list of required/additional seeing for each week on the canvas pages, on the lecture and seminar slides, and in the Rawlinson textbook, for example.

Your response must show evidence of independent research. Start with the essential and recommended reading on the Canvas site and develop your analysis by incorporating secondary material found using the library search which helps you contextualise your discussion of the visual texts critically and historically.

sources I need to use:
1. https://www.historyonthenet.com/authentichistory/1898-1913/2-progressivism/2-riis/chap4.html – chapters IV-X

2. Rawlinson, American Visual Culture, pp. 95-105 and pp. 125-147

3. https://collections.mcny.org/CS.aspx?VP3=DamView&VBID=24UP1GRR3MRKG&PN=1&WS=SearchResults&FR_=1&W=1440&H=820

Optional, just to help you a little:
‘Tenement Life through the Eyes of Jacob Riis’ – YouTube (ignore awful music!)
‘A Layman’s Sermon: Jacob A. Riis on How the Other Half Lives & Dies in NY’ – reconstructed lecture by Jacob Riis with magic lantern style photographs – Museum of the City of New York
Arts in the City news piece on the Tenement Museum, which includes information on the Lower East Side
‘Jacob Riis: Revealing How the Other Half Lives’ – American History TV C-SPAN – news segment about a 2016 exhibition on Riis at the Library on Congress
‘Jacob Riis, Reformer’ – short NBC News Learn news segment
‘Deconstructing History: Ellis Island’ – short film with plenty of facts about Ellis Island

I can provide access to all of these sources although they are easily accessible online

Also I think I would like to answer this question saying that he was a bit of both, but more of the surveillance thing. I know my opinion, just can’t express it very well… it needs to be said that he was bit of both, but I’d rather disagree with his work, as he’s been showing only bad side of these people’s life, violating their privacy and not seeing them as people, rather as an exhibition very much different than “normal people” at the time,. something like that.

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