the hard truth
"When Jacob A. Riis, a police reporter in New York, began his personal campaign to expose the misery of the underprivileged living in the crime-infested slums of the lower East side, he soon found that the printed word was not sufficiently convincing, and so he turned to photography by flashlight. In 1888 the New York Sun published twelve drawings from his photographs with an article headlined "Flashes from the Slums" and told how "a mysterious party has lately been startling the town o' nights. Somnolent policemen on the street, denizens of the dives in their dens, tramps and bummers in their so-called lodgings, and all the people of the wild and wonderful variety of New York night life have in their turn marvelled at and been frightened by the phenomenon." What they saw was three or four figures in the gloom, a ghostly tripod, some weird and uncanny movements, the blinding flash, and then they heard the patter of retreating footsteps and the mysterious visitors were gone before they could collect their scattered thoughts and try to find out what it was all about."
From "The History of Photography," Beaumont Newhall, 1982
Jacob Riis, "Five Cents Lodging, Bayard Street, c. 1889
Lewis Hine, "Climbing into America, " Ellis Island, New York, 1905
Garry Winogrand, "Untitled," 1954