A very short film about the legendary Danish-American Jacob A. Riis who was one of the 19th century’s most innovative journalists and the father of modern documentary photography.
Tormented by unrequited love, Jacob Riis emigrated from Denmark to the United States in 1870 and ended up as the very definition of the American dream. His good friend and President at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, called him ‘an ideal American’.
But before that, Riis had to work his way up from scratch as a drifter, a shipwright, an iron salesman and more.
He went on to become recognized as one of America’s most significant social revolutionaries, and in his book ‘How the Other Half Lives’, he documented, through photographs and text, the plight of immigrants living in New York’s slums.
This little film is wrapped in an incredible love story.