PHOTO-JOURNALISTS ON GHETTO STREETS (1900-1918)

Newspaper photographers were busy on ghetto streets.  Editors embellished bold captions in headlines with graphic photographs drawing a reader to read the print message. Seeing was a step to believing, vicariously being there roaming ghetto streets.  Active, expressive children, often eager to pose and mug for the camera, were the most common focus of  the photographer’s attention.  What did a street “urchin” look like, or those same children cleaned up, “mothered,” and supervised by reformers in the sphere of the Settlement House?  Were pictures of alien places and peoples in a ghetto and slum neighborhood worth a thousand words?  bjb