Jacob Riis is the photographer and the slum is the Five Points.
Is it bad that I don’t think that looks too bad?
You can't smell a photo.
Pictures don't tell you the full story. You're probably thinking there's heating, food, etc which are probably in short supply.
In the 1880s Shantytowns were pretty common, and compared to those, these people live in a much better house. Hell, most of the frontier towns would look worse than this.
Yeah, they probably don't have heating other than woodfires, water or plumbing, but that's the same for a huge portion of the population anywhere in the 1880s. Of course, the big city comes with big city problems like disease, water, food, fuel that frontier towns didn't have to deal with (as much)
Well… yes and no. You’ve seen the homeless encampments in, like, basically every single decent sized US city, right? I can’t imagine the conditions there would be better than the slums shown here.
You're probably comparing this to the way people still live in many parts of the world or have lived everywhere for most of human history, which is bad and you should feel bad
Just living life without the distractions of phones and cars!
And lots of starving, disease and violence! Living the life!
one guy has a camera
Horses smell much worse than cars, and take a lot more work too.
And yet they're dressed nicer than most people on the street today. Or at least most people in the local Walmart.
They usually only had one pair of clothes though.
Living the dream.
Is it me, or do these people look really short?
Everybody used to be shorter on average, yes.
This is definitely not a slum.
I'm not saying youre wrong, but why do you say that?
Looking at the "ghost" on the left, I wonder how long they had to stand still for this picture to be taken.
In the late 1880s, not really all that long with fairly recent cameras. https://time.com/4568032/smile-serious-old-photos/
