in "children of the poor" little katie whose picture in a heavily reworked half tone opens the scribner's article. katie was a nine-year-old whom riis meant on a visit to the west 52nd street industrial school founded by the children's aid society to provide classes for children who did not attend public school. unlike the raiding party of the earlier flashlight photographs, riis introduced himself to katie and interviewed her. he learned when her mother died, her father took a new wife and she and her older siblings moved out. katie kept house for them while they worked in factories. riis remarked "this picture shows what a sober sturdy little patient she was. help is got up and stood up for her picture without a smile." what kind of work do you do i asked? i scrubs she replied promptly and her look guaranteed that what she scrubbed came out clean. this new approach in which the photographer shows respect for a subject and give hearse a voice is more in line with current values and representation practices, the book, which combined these word and image portraits with board of health stat

in 1890 scribner's published a book length version of how the other half lives which became a national best seller. this is what riis is known for and is considering the beginning of modern photojournalism however the book is in many ways unmodern or at least modern in ways we no longer relate to. the revolutionary flashlight photographs such as "five cents a spot" remain disturbing even today. however, they have been criticized for portraying the city's homeless as hapless victims photographed without their permission. indeed, riis gave them a good scare. he burst into the room with what he called a raiding party, two photographs, and a sanitary policeman and himself and set off an explosion. on several occasions the combustible flash powder caused a fire. during riis' lifetime the only times his photographs were seen as photographs were in his lectures like this projected on a wall. when they were projected on a screen or wall for a live audience, in his article and books on the other hand they were most often copied as wood engravings. this explains why the photographs were almost n

we have a wonderful first edition owned a close friend of scribner's editor and also the head of what was known as the builder committee, the tenement house committee. that was a government committee assigned to investigate the conditions of the poor, particularly the issues of sanitation and crowding. much to riis' surprise, "how the other half lives" was a huge bestseller. it came out at a time when there was almost a prurient interest in the slums among the middle class. other people had written books that describe conditions of the poor, but riis had a special story telling style and almost a sociological approach to describing the different ethnic communities that were in the lower east side. one of the things he did was use statistics. >> he used statistics. in fact, i had never read "how the other half lives." i listen to it as an audiobook. it was astounding to hear a voice illuminate's words. -- illuminate his words. you realize listening to it how he was evangelizing for reform, describing these dark places that he was bringing light to with his photography. he is most effec

i also think that the power of the scribner's also attributed to the professional artists they got to engrave his photographs in the magazine. so, kenyan cox, for instance, is artist translating riis' photographs here. you see chinese opium den on the bottom and the five cent spot photo we started with enlarged on the front wall is on the left-hand page. >> you know, one of the things that he was very concerned about were the very huge infant mortality rates that the guilder committee i had mentioned, they referred to the rear tenements as slaughter houses for infants. one out of five baseballs born in the tenements, especially in the rear tenements, died in early childhood. and when we talk about rear tenements, and it's not only that the tenement buildings themselves were overcrowded, that many people couldn't even afford to live in the buildings so where else did they live? they lived in dumps. they lived on the street. and they lived in these rear tenements and basically wood shack structures that were built on to the -- in to the back alleyways of often wood or brick tenement bui

you know, managing projects and then after some number of years i was promoted from an editor at scribner's. i moved to brown, became editor of chief we are responsible for managing a group of people, and as a publisher you're responsible for the p&l of the publishing division. that means you got to give every detail, paper cost, jacket off, advances, publicity costs, where you're spending money on marketing that everything that goes into making as successful publication. so overseeing it is a good step towards running the p&l of the entire company because it is an aggregation. >> is hachette a private company? >> hachette is a publicly traded company in france that is controlled by a family. the parent company is a mixed media company that has television, radio, travel retailers, book publishing and magazine publishing and some other businesses. >> to whom do you report? >> the global ceo who is a brilliant, brilliant strategist, statistician and financial mine who understands the full range of what goes into publishing successfully. when i first entered this job, i asked him, we got to ta

the success of his first book, he got to work on "the children of the poor," first published in scribner's magazine and then as a full-length book in 1892. this shows the opening page, the picture on the left is unrelated. it's for another article. but this shows you the first page of the book, and features very worked over half tone. this is a transitional moment in reproductive technology of little katie, who i'm going to introduce you to in a moment. perhaps because his subjects were children or because he grew more comfortable with the camera, riis changed his approach to photographing. typical of the photographs and children, little katie, whose picture in a heavily reworked half tone opens the scribners article. katie was a 9-year-old, whom riis met on a visit to the industrial school, founded by the children's aid society to provide classes for children who did not attend school. unlike the raiding party, riis introduced himself to katie and interviewed her. he learned when her mother died, his father took a new wife. katie kept house for them. about katie, riis remarked this pictur

and children the poorest little katie, who's picture in a heavily reworked half tone opens the scribner's article. katie was a 9-year-old whom riis met on the visit of west 52nd street industrial school. unlike the rating party of the earlier flash light photographs riis introduced himself to katie and interviewed her. he learned men her mother died, her father took a new wife and she and older siblings moved out. this picture shows what a sober patient thing she was. she stood for a picture without question and smile. what kind of work do you do i asked. i scrub, she replied. her work guaranteed what she scrubbed came out clean. this new approach in which the photographer shows subject and gives her a voice is more in line with current values and representational practices. the book which combined these words and images with border health statistics and program was a commercial failure. between 1891 and 1893, riis used the camera regularly as an extension of his writing. while preparing the children of the poor, he also took a series of photographs for three newspaper exposes dealing wit