1870

In the 1870'S Jacob A Riis moved to New York city from Denmark. He bought himself a wooden 4x5 box cam which was much more portable than the wet plate cameras however they still took around the same time to set up. He started to document the streets of New York instead of any war which is now one of the first examples of documentary photography. He looked at the poor conditions of the public and what the effect of industrialisation was doing to America as he photographed the poor and inside slums. He was also the first photographer to use flash as he used flash powder to capture the dark interiors on slums.
 This is what his camera would have looked like basically looked at as this was the basic 4x5 wooden/metal box camera.

In this image below he has taken an image of children sleeping on the streets. He could have set up his camera captured the empathetic image and left without any of the children being aware of his presence due to their tired weak state which again to me means that this image counts as a candid photograph.

 

Image labelled: How the other half lived.

These series of images was published in a book in 1890 in which he includes his images from 1870-1890

Photo credit: kottke.org

 

I have chosen to represent one of his documentary photos so you can see an image in which he had to use the flash powder to capture the intense conditions of some slums in America also posted in his book ' How the other half lived'.

 

Image labelled: lodgers in a crowded Bayard street, tenement.

Photo credit: www.smithsonianmag.com