in the 1940's, a photographer named alexander alland noticed in riis' book that on the title page it says "with illustrations after photographs by the author." he said to himself, where are these photographs? after several years of searching, he tracked down rii'' son and with much coercing, got his son to try to find the pictures which turned out to be in the attic of his family's home in queens, new york, that was about to be torn down. his son discovered a box filled with 400-odd negatives, 300-odd lantern slides, and almost 200 paper prints and delivered them to alexander alland, the photographer. taking a couple of years, he created an exhibition from the negatives, making beautiful prints from the negatives and working with the curator with the museum of new york to put on an exhibition called "battle of the slums." it established riis as an important photographer. that is how he entered the history of photography. my problem is a curator in the 1980's was, we don't have prints to show because those almost 200 vintage prints, about half were not by riis at all, and most were in

in the 1940s, photographer alexander alland, sr., had noticed that the title page of "how the other half lives" announced that the book's illustrations were based on photographs by the author. searching for these photographs, alland contacted riis' son and convinced him to ask the current owners of the house in queens where he grew up if he might look in the attic for his father's photographs. there he found a box which contained the 450 negatives, 326 slides and 191 vintage prints that now comprise the riis collection. the very fact that riis did not save his photographs is the most important clue to what he thought of them. in contrast to the photographs, riis organized, annotated all of his papers for posterity. his family gave most of them to the library of congress and a smaller portion to the new york public library. when riis sold the family home and moved to massachusetts in 1912 he left the photographs in the attic. the contents of the box in the attic was give on the the museum of the city of new york because alland teamed up with the curator at the time, grace mayer and a toge