A Danish-born American photographer/journalist of the late 19th Century. His reports on immigrant life in the tenements and sweatshops of his adopted hometown New York City brought attention to some of the excesses of unbridled capitalism, leading to many social and economic reforms when Theodore Roosevelt (a Riis fan) was NYC police commissioner, and later, when TR was the US president.

Riis, Jacob August, born in Ribe, Denmark, May 3, 1849, son of Niels Edward Riis. Came to New York, and after some interesting adventures joined the staff of the New York "Sun" as a police reporter. Kept his eyes open to his surroundings and was first to call public attention in vivid and impressive style to the needs and struggles of the poor of America's metropolis. His book, "How the Other Half Lives," was received with interest and awakened philanthropy to a sense of its duty to less fortunate humanity in the great cities.

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Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.