In “Christmas on the Lower East Side,” Jacob Riis talks about the last of the slum dwellers

Even on the ugliest street of tenements, Christmas brings something quaint and merry. His message has always been addressed to the poor and downtrodden, and is understood by them with an instinctive desire to do him honor.” In Natale nel Lower East Side (Mattioli 1885, 136 pp., 10 euro), Jacob Riis, father of social photography and writer of the second half of the 19th century, talks about Christmas in his adopted city – New York – and in particular in the poor suburbs inhabited by expatriates on the Lower East Side.

An immigrant of Danish origins and the third of fifteen brothers, Riis arrives in the Big Apple at the age of twenty and begins, after a series of makeshift occupations, as a crime reporter for the New York Tribune and later as a photojournalist for the Associated Press . The main object of his literary and photographic research are the city slums, the story of the dark streets, apartments, blocks of flats and taverns, carefully photographing the difficulties faced by the poor and even the criminals who found themselves committing crimes in these contexts .

Christmas is a special time for everyone, including the poor. And Riis brings in his stories detailed descriptions of what happens in poor neighborhoods: children who eagerly await the arrival of gifts every year and hang up their stockings (often destined to remain empty), parents who keep the best party dress to look for , at least one day a year, to free themselves from their normal condition. Poverty is pitiless, it cuts off legs and insinuates itself into every little detail, often corroding it almost in a sinister way. Nonetheless, starting from the smallest but also for adults, the Christmas period offers an opportunity to raise one’s head, to try not to stop at personal circumstances. It offers, sometimes only for minimal glimpses, a possibility of hope for the future.

“It was me who changed, not Christmas. Here I was, with the old cheer, the old message of goodwill, the old highway to the heart of humanity. How many times had I seen his blessed charity, which never corrupts, illuminate the hovels of darkness and despair?’ Sometimes a ray of sunshine penetrating between the buildings is enough to give new shape and substance to the reality that you have before your eyes every day. And it is no coincidence that light is such an important element in Riis’ narration as it is in photography.

The richness that a photographer who is a writer can bring is that of knowing how to investigate, fathom reality to bring to light what is usually in the darkness. Outlining the outlines of contexts and situations that may be unattractive and desirable but which can hide unexpected folds. To do this, with words or images, one must necessarily get one’s hands dirty, involve oneself with the reality one is trying to know and transfer. Carefully observe Christmas in the Lower East Side to know how to tell what you see and to make sure that, as if against the light, the invisible emerges that you choose to suggest without directly manifesting. The story – or the photograph – thus contains everything, what is included and what remains outside. It returns a feeling, in its fullness. It is no coincidence that Riis was defined by President Roosevelt as “the most useful citizen of New York”. “The innumerable evils that lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, that roam the slums and make their permanent home in the tenements, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable adversary they have ever met in New York.”