Theodore Roosevelt - Riis, Jacob A.

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Résumé :
Of the President I am proud with reason, but the friend I love. And if I can make you see him so, as a friend and a man, I have given you the master-key to him as a statesman as well. -Jacob Riis, Theodore Roosevelt-The Citizen Theodore Roosevelt-The Citizen (1904) was written by Jacob Riis, a journalist and good friend of Roosevelt's. Riis explained that his book was not going to be a formal biography as most people knew Roosevelt already. Neither would it be about the meaning of Roosevelt's life as there were still many more years to come. This biography would be about Roosevelt, the man and friend of Riis'. It became a wonderful and personable biography. Roosevelt and Riis met after Roosevelt had heard about Riis's book How the Other Half Lives (1890), about the poverty in the slums of New York City. A few years later, when Roosevelt was New York Police Commissioner and Riis a police reporter, the two often worked together. Both passionate for reform and improvement of people's lives, they became good friends.

Biographie:
Jacob August Riis (1849 - 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, muckraking journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of model tenements in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography. While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the bad living conditions of poor people by exposing their living conditions to the middle and upper classes.