Jacob Riis (1849-1914) was a pioneering newspaper reporter and social reformer in New York at the turn of the 20th century. His then-novel idea of using photographs of the city’s slums to illustrate the plight of impoverished residents established Riis as a forerunner of modern photojournalism.

The Museum of the City of New mounted the first major retrospective of Riis’s photographic work in the United States since World War II. His reportage and photos—while somewhat flawed by personal and political biases—still resonate today.