The heartbreaking pictures of New York's slums that prompted social reform and earned immigrant photographer praise as the city's 'most useful citizen'

• Photographer Jacob A Riis moved to America from Denmark after his marriage proposal was shot down 
• Immigrant suffered in extreme poverty before becoming journalist and documenting squalid conditions
• Though now criticized for bias against ethnicities, Riis showed terrible conditions of Irish, Italian and Eastern European tenement neighborhoods to middle class Americans whose outrage would eventually lead to reforms
• Exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York opens on October 14 and will later travel to Washington DC

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3261279/The-heartbreaking-pictures-New-York-s-slums-prompted-social-reform-earned-muckraking-immigrant-photographer-praise-city-s-useful-citizen.html#ixzz3nmwSvoPA