Pioneers of Documentary Photography Featured in New Exhibit on "Scientific Charity"

Pioneers of Documentary Photography Featured in New Exhibit on "Scientific Charity"

 
Nick Obourn  

Obourn, Nick. "Pioneers of Documentary Photography Featured in New Exhibit on 'Scientific Charity'"On Campus | Columbia News. N.p., 14 Nov. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. <http://news.columbia.edu/socialforces>.

Date: 11/13/2012

For a quick link to the video, click here.

This is a review of an exhibition of photographs used in the early 20th century for scientific manuals regarding social work practice in New York City. Highlighted in this exhibition are clotheslines of those in poverty stretched across ally ways in tennnant housing districts.

Key Quotes:

Introduction to photography exhibition:

"A boy with leg braces and crutches rests against a fire alarm. A woman hangs laundry from a clothesline strung across an airshaft behind a row of tenement buildings. Pushcarts line a crowded street in lower Manhattan. "

"These haunting black-and-white photographs are featured in a new exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery that explores the role that social welfare organizations founded in the 19th and early 20th century played in documenting and alleviating the plight of the urban poor."

Key Figures:

Community Service Society (CSS)

Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine and Jessie Tarbox Beals - American Photographers.