The Mirror With A Memory Analysis

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Pages: 3

The Mirror with a Memory was written by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle. The general subject of this work was based around a man named Jacob Riis. Jacob Riis was twenty-one when he decided to migrate from Denmark to America. Although he was raised in a middle class family, he felt the need to come to America for a better opportunity in the carpentry field. After coming to America, there were rare times where he would actually get to work with carpentry. This resulted in Riis going through poverty to the point where he would beg for money on the streets as he lay dying. Fortunately, he was taken in and found a job as a police reporter with The Tribune, where he would observe urban poverty. After writing multiple exposes on the bad slum conditions, Riis was not …show more content…
He then left his job at The Tribune and spent his time writing books such as How the Other Half Lives in order to emphasize the bad living conditions to hopefully make the rest of society sympathize for these people and help them. While creating his books, he discovered an effective way to arouse popular indignation as proof of the bad slum situations – photographs.
Key points made about photographs included it being a way to help prove reality. Because the camera only captured what was presented in front of it with no way to alter it at the time, it was considered “a mirror with a memory”. It proved to be more effective than the usual painting because paintings were seen to exclude documentary evidence. In addition, painters each have their own sense of style, so no matter how precise one tries to paint, it will always be slightly different than the reality. However, the problem with the camera is the selection of evidence. After picking a frame, there are still technical constraints as to what can be documented, decreasing