Kevin

-  Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis were social reformers who used the medium of photography to bring evidence of their claims to their viewers.  Their style of photography may best be called "social reform," for each photographer used the medium to effect social change.

Jacob Riis
        
-  In Jacob Riis' book, How the Other Half Lives, the author gives a clear sense of what poverty and degradation was like at the turn of the previous century.  The photos are perhaps the most gripping aspect of the book. To see the tiny, crowded rooms populated by unreal numbers of people and the eyes of hungry children that stare out of the picture is a powerful experience, even a century later.  Riis' book allows one to get very close to the misery these people felt. This book is a very grim depection of life, such as it was for these immigrants.

 -  Riis argued for better housing, adequate lighting and sanitation, and the construction of city parks and playgrounds. He portrayed middle-class and upper-class citizens as benefactors and encouraged them to take an active role in defining and shaping their communities.

-  Riis believed that charitable citizens would help the poor when they saw for themselves how "the other half" lived. He believed that private wealth could help transform the slums into better places to live.

"I am a believer in organized, systematic charity upon the evidence of my senses," – Jacob Riis

Lewis Hine

-  Lewis Hine spent his career and talents campaigning against child labor and other social conditions.  The National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), which was founded in 1904, hired Lewis Hine to travel around the country photographing child workers in factories, mills, mines, and canneries.  Hine created an extensive photographic record that enabled the NCLC to present its case to the public and to federal government officials.  

In analyzing some photographs of both men, I believe that it is true that a photo brings one immediately into close touch with reality.  That it is often more effective than the reality would have been, because, in the picture, the non-essential and conflicting interests have been eliminated.

Frank

Notes for Frederick Law Olmsted

-Towards the end of the 1850s city beautification became an issue that more and more leaders followed and explored. The theory behind this movement was that the more ascetically pleasing you make a city, the more people will want to live in that city and the happier they will be.

- Olmstead was the leading landscape architect of the post-Civil War generation, and has long been acknowledges as the founder of American landscape architecture.

- Olmstead was appointed as the Superintendent of Central Park, New York City, in 1857, early in the development of that park project.

- Olmstead eventually teamed up and collaborated on this project with Calvert Vaux.  Together, they named their new project - "Greensward" - which was selected as the winning design for the park. He later worked with Vaux to design Prospect Park, Chicago's' Riverside subdivision, Buffalo's park system, and the Niagara Reservation at Niagara Falls.

- In 1883, Olmstead began work on a park system for the City of Boston, and focused much of his time on the Emerald Necklace.  The design of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago was also one of Olmstead's projects at the time.

- In 1895, Olmstead put a close on his career due to worsening health conditions. Eventually, senility forced him to be confined in the McLean Hospital in Waverly, Massachusetts. Ironically, Olmstead had designed the grounds of the Institution.  Today, his papers are housed in the Library of Congress, while the Olmstead Historic site preserves the drawings and plans of some of his works.