How do heroes live?

Camila Shoshan 3o Secundaria

A hero is someone who puts others’ needs over their own. They inspire people through this, with their selflessness and good morals when faced with conflict. Conflict, there needs to be conflict for there to be heroes; that means someone could be a hero to some and a villain to others. I like to find heroes in movies and books, in the characters, fictional or not, and in those who create them. Authors such as the man who used his talent to help hundreds of thousands of people over a century ago, Jacob Riis.

If you are an American photographer, or if you are very interested in NYC’s history, then I am sure you have heard of Jacob Riis. He was a DanishAmerican journalist and pioneer photographer of the flash camera. His work is a reference to how life was for European immigrants in America in the late XIX century and early XX. A Danish immigrant himself, Jacob Riis took upon the task to document and expose the horrid conditions that immigrants faced living in the dangerous NYC slums where he himself had lived earlier in his life. To do this, he tried sketching and journaling, but finally ended up realizing the most detailed way to document was with photography. So of course, Riss became a photographer. Photographing the slums was very hard because of its rather dark color palette, but Riis found a way nevertheless, the newly invented flash camera. He related many of his photographs with articles and books written by himself, among these books, the most notable one is definitely a famous 1980s book titled “How the Other Half Lives” . Riis’s work is responsible for exposing how “the other half” lived to the upper classes. Following his work there were many reforms set in NYC in relation to housing and child labor. Riis wasn't a hero to everyone, some of his writings had racist insinuations in them which should not be overlooked. But over all he helped many many people, and today, over a hundred years later, that's what matters.

Indeed a hero is selfless, a hero has good morals, a hero is smart, but overall, a hero is someone who helps. So you and I can be heroes too, just like Jacob Riis.