Welcome to the deep dive. We've got an incredibly
compelling mission for today's exploration. We
really do. Yeah. We are zeroing in on a single
profoundly powerful primary source. It's from
circa 1890. Right at the height of the Gilded
Age. Exactly. And it's a black and white photograph
taken by the Danish -American photographer and
social reformer, Jacob Rees. And the title of
this image is just simply ice grips. Right. And
if you've ever been fascinated by the birth of
social documentary photography or just the untold
stories of everyday resilience, this is... This
will completely change how you view archival
images. Totally. So for the listener, our focus
today is really the girl who's scrubbed. We're
unpacking Jacob Riis' eye scrubs and how this
one unsmiling nine -year -old girl helped to
entirely shift the ethical landscape of photography.
And social reform in New York City. Yeah. So
to set the stage, we are dropping right into
the late 19th century, like you said, circa 1890.
Which is just an era of intense, rapid industrialization.
Massive waves of immigration. And absolutely
crushing poverty in these urban centers. Now,
a lot of you listening might be familiar with
Jacob Reese's really famous 1890 book, How the
Other Half Lives. Right. It's basically a landmark
piece of social reform. It is. But today, we're
focusing on the sequel to that book, which was
published in 1892. The Children of the Poor.
Yes. OK, let's unpack this. Because what was
the driving force behind Reese writing a sequel
so quickly? Well, the driving force was really
this realization that the first book, I mean,
as groundbreaking as it was. It painted with
a very broad brush. Exactly. With How the Other
Half Lives, Reese was taking aim at general poverty.
The structural score. The overcrowding, the disease.
Yeah. But with the children of the poor, his
focus just narrows dramatically. He pivots to
a very specific demographic. Right. A group that
was falling through the cracks of even the most
well -intentioned reform efforts. The children
of the poorer classes. And specifically, children
who are already participating in the grueling
labor force at just a startlingly young age.
Yeah. Reese isn't walking through the tenement
districts observing kids, you know, playing stickball
in the street or causing mischief. No, he's looking
at working children. And not just working a few
hours a week for pocket money either. We're talking
about carrying the kind of physical and psychological
burdens that would absolutely break most modern
adults. He saw a system that was just consuming
its youngest and most vulnerable members. And
his purpose with this second book was to sound
the alarm. He wanted to force the creation of
better conditions for these kids. So before we
delve into the specifics of this one photograph,
I want to ask you, the listener, to just pause
for a second. Try to place yourself in that 1890s
mindset. Yeah, think back to when you were nine
years old. Picture what your days looked like.
And now strip away the schoolyard. The playtime.
The inherent freedom and safety of childhood.
Replace that with the full unyielding weight
of adult survival responsibilities. Just imagine
the physical toll of manual labor and the mental
toll of extreme poverty day in and day out within
the stifling walls of a tenement building. That
is the reality we are stepping into. It's a staggering
reality to try and map onto a child. And that
brings us right to the subject of our deep dive
today. Let's meet little Katie, the girl behind
the lens. So the full formal title of this photograph
gives us our first major clues about her life.
That title is incredibly striking. It is, because
it immediately centers her voice. Right, in an
era where the poor were often treated as silent,
nameless subjects. Subjects to be studied or
pitied. The title doesn't just describe her from
an outsider's perspective. It quotes her directly.
Eye scrubs. It's an active, definitive statement
of identity. It really is. And we know some highly
specific details about her living situation at
the time this photo was taken. Katie is nine
years old. She lives on West 49th Street in New
York City. And she resides on the top floor of
a tenement building. And to understand the gravity
of that, we really have to look at her family
dynamics. Which were complex and incredibly demanding.
Yeah, she lived with her father, her stepmother,
an older sister, and two brothers. And the defining
characteristic of this household is that all
of her siblings worked. The older sister and
both brothers were part of the labor force. To
fully grasp what that means, we have to visualize
that top floor tenement. Oh, those buildings
were notoriously brutal environments. They were
narrow, typically five to six stories high. With
minimal ventilation. Very little natural light.
Yeah. And often no indoor plumbing beyond a single
cold water tap in the hallway. If that. Right.
Now put a family of six or seven people into
a few tiny cramped rooms in that environment.
The fact that all the older siblings are working
tells us that the economic margins of this family
are razor thin. The combined wages of the father
The older sister and the two brothers are still
barely enough to keep a roof over their heads.
And food on the table. Every single capable hand
has to generate value. Which brings us to Katie's
specific value generation. Captured right in
that interaction with Reese, he meets her, he
asks her what her work is, and her answer is
that blunt, unadorned phrase. Icer grubs. But
it's Reese's observation of her that really stands
out to me. He notes that her look guaranteed
that what she scrubbed came out clean. What's
fascinating here is that Reese is looking at
a nine -year -old child, but he's evaluating
her with the metrics you'd use for a seasoned
professional. He doesn't see a helpless waif.
No, he sees a highly competent, serious worker.
He describes her in his writings as a sober,
patient, sturdy little thing. He recognizes a
profound resilience in her demeanor. She isn't
doing a sloppy job just to get by. She takes
her labor seriously because her survival and
her family's functioning depends on it. And the
setting where he meets her adds another layer
to this. He encounters her at the West 52nd Street
Industrial School. These industrial schools were
established specifically for poor children. Often
run by charitable organizations. So Katie is
existing at this intense intersection. She's
attending this school, presumably attempting
to get some rudimentary education. Or vocational
training. Maybe getting a hot meal. Yeah. But
her core identity, the way she introduces herself
to a stranger, exactly, is defined entirely by
her manual labor. It highlights a tragic dichotomy.
The school represents a desperate grasp of childhood,
a place for learning. But the reality of her
life outside those walls overrides it. She isn't
Katie the student. She is Katie who scrubs. I
really want to dwell on the sheer physical toll
of that existence. We're talking about a nine
year old girl. Her day consists of scrubbing
floors. Getting down on her hands and knees with
harsh lye soap. Hauling heavy wooden buckets
of dirty water. Ringing out rags until her hands
are raw. And then, at the end of that exhausting,
bone -deep manual labor. She has to walk back
to West 49th Street. And physically climb the
dark, narrow stairs all the way to the top floor
of her tenement. The physical exhaustion alone
is difficult to comprehend for a child whose
bones are still growing. But Reese captures something
even darker. He writes about the psychological
weight. Describing that dull life wearing on
her day by day. It's the sheer grinding monotony
of it all. There is no weekend to look forward
to. No summer vacation. No upward mobility. It
is a relentless unending cycle of poverty and
physical exertion. A hard life that stretches
out endlessly before her, slowly eroding the
spark of youth. This is a sobering thought. It
really is. If you picture a nine -year -old in
your life right now. A daughter, a niece, a neighbor.
And you superimpose Katie's daily routine onto
them. The contrast is jarring. Waking up in a
suffocatingly crowded tenement room. Heading
out to scrub floors or attend a charity school.
trudging home to climb five flights of stairs
and carrying the sober patient demeanor of a
sturdy hardened worker. It strips away any romanticized
notions of the past and exposes the incredibly
harsh reality of 1890s poverty. It certainly
does. And what makes it even more devastating
is understanding that Katie's situation was not
an isolated incident. She was not a unique tragedy
that Reese happened to stumble upon. No, she
belonged to a broader recognized demographic
within the slums that Reese identified and categorized.
He referred to girls in Katie's specific situation
as little mothers. The little mothers. It's a
term that is simultaneously affectionate and
deeply disturbing. Reese used this phrase for
the girls in his pictures because despite their
young age, they had inherited responsibilities
that were entirely adult in nature. We see exactly
what those responsibilities looked like in Katie's
life. Her specific domestic burden On top of
everything else, was keeping house for her older
sister and her two brothers. Imagine the logistics
of that. We've established that the older siblings
are out working wage earning jobs to pay the
rent. That leaves nine year old Katie. living
on the top floor as the primary caretaker of
the domestic space. Keeping house in an 1890s
tenement meant hauling fresh water up five flights
of stairs for drinking and cooking. It meant
hauling the wastewater back down. It meant managing
the coal stove. Preparing whatever meager meals
they could afford. Mending clothes and keeping
the suffocating soot and grime of the city at
bay. She is responsible for the domestic survival
of three older working siblings. And Reese has
this incredibly poignant, almost poetic quote
summarizing her situation. He says, very early,
the cross of her sex had been laid upon the little
shoulders that bore it so stoutly. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, that phrase, the
cross of her sex, is essential to understanding
the social dynamics of the era. What does that
mean in the context of the 1890s slums? It implies
that on top of the crushing indiscriminate burdens
of extreme poverty. Female children faced an
entirely separate gendered burden. The boys in
the family were forced into wage labor, which
is horrific in its own right. But the female
children, the little mothers, were saddled with
domestic management. They were expected to be
the glue holding the household together. Performing
invisible unpaid labor that was essential for
the wage earners to function. It creates this
intense duality in her existence. She is a child.
Yet she is functioning as the de facto matriarch
of a working household. The poverty forces everyone
in the family to sacrifice their comfort. But
the gender dynamics of the 19th century dictate
exactly how that sacrifice is extracted. The
boys sell their labor to the factories or the
streets. The girls sacrifice their childhood.
to the maintenance of the home. And they bore
it, as Reese noted, stoutly. There was no room
for complaint. No alternative safety net to catch
them if they failed. The survival of the family
unit depended on a nine -year -old girl successfully
managing the exhausting logistics of a tenement
household. Here's where it gets really interesting,
though, when you realize that because she wasn't
an anomaly, because there were thousands of little
mothers throughout the Lower East Side in Hell's
Kitchen, carrying this specific burden. Reese
had to figure out how to accurately capture the
reality and recognizing the quiet dignity. That
sturdy sober reality of these girls seems to
have forced a massive shift in Reese's own professional
methodology. It was a monumental shift. And to
understand the evolution of Reese as a reformer,
we have to look closely at the ethics of the
lens. There is a stark documented contrast between
how Reese operated when he published How the
Other Half Lives in 1890 versus how he operated
just two years later with The Children of the
Poor. Let's break down that contrast. In his
earlier work, His methods were famously aggressive.
He photographed people very often, entirely without
their permission. That is putting it mildly.
Reece's early methods were essentially photographic
ambushes. We have to remember the technology
of the time. Photography in the dark, cramped
interiors of the tenements required artificial
light. This was the era of explosive magnesium
flash powder. Rees often accompanied by police
or health inspectors would literally burst into
a tenement room or a cellar dive in the middle
of the night. He'd set up his bulky camera equipment
in the pitch black. Ignite this flash powder,
which created a blinding explosion of light.
A loud bang. And a cloud of acrid smoke. He'd
capture the terrified, disoriented reactions
of the sleeping inhabitants. And then flee before
they could fully realize what had happened. It
sounds like a home invasion. He was using the
camera as an offensive weapon to capture the
raw, unfiltered squalor. He wanted to shock middle
-class society, and he used shock tactics on
the subjects to get those images. But for eye
scrubs, and for the portraits in this second
book, he abandons that tactic completely. He
takes the absolute opposite approach. He started
getting to know the children. and asking them
for permission prior to taking the photograph.
This raises an important question about the history
of social documentary photography, and really,
the history of journalistic ethics. Why change
tactics? Why abandon the explosive ambush for
the quiet, negotiated portrait? If we look at
what he is trying to capture, the dullness and
harshness of a child's life. That slow, grinding
attrition of the spirit. You cannot capture that
with a surprise explosion in the middle of the
night. A flash powder ambush. captures acute
terror and confusion. But to capture the profound,
chronic exhaustion of a little mother, you need
her to sit still. You need to look her in the
eye. You need a baseline level of trust and interaction.
You can't capture a sober patient demeanor if
you are startling someone out of their sleep.
You have to ask. And we know exactly how Katie
reacted when he asked. Reece states that when
she was asked to take the photograph at the school,
she accepted it without questioning or smiling.
The absence of a smile in this photograph is
the absolute critical element. It is the defining
feature of the portrait. It demonstrates her
maturity far more effectively than her physical
stature. She looks incredibly mature for her
age, and her indifferent look is the visual manifestation
of the dullness and harshness of her life. If
you picture the scene, it is incredibly powerful.
You have Jacob Brees, a Danish -American reformer,
setting up this large, cumbersome 1890s camera
on a wooden tripod. He's ducking under a dark
cloth to focus the lens. And he asks this nine
-year -old girl, who has spent her morning scrubbing
floors, for permission to take her picture. She
doesn't ask him why he wants it. She doesn't
primp or try to perform for the camera. She just
stands there and gives him the indifferent, deadly,
serious look. It is a level of unvarnished brutal
truth that you almost never see in portraiture
from that era. It is a foundational moment. Think
about modern photojournalism. Think about the
intense ongoing debates we have today regarding
the ethics of photographing vulnerable subjects.
The concept of informed consent. The power dynamic
between the person behind the lens and the person
in front of it. We can trace the roots of those
complex ethical debates right back to this quiet
interaction in 1890. When does a subject transition
from being a mere prop used to illustrate poverty
to being an active, consenting participant in
their own historical documentation? Katie, by
accepting the photograph without questioning
or smiling, claims her space in that process.
She refuses to perform. She simply exists in
her reality. That refusal to perform is what
gives the image its immense power. And it ties
directly into what Reese was actually trying
to achieve. Let's talk about the mission of muckraking
journalism. Reese's ultimate goal for the children
of the poor was explicit. He wanted to alert
people to the crisis. To force the creation of
better conditions for the children of the poorer
classes. To understand how he planned to do that,
we need to define the fields he was operating
in. Reese's work is categorized as muckraking
journalism and social documentary photography.
It is crucial to understand that these were not
artistic endeavors meant for quiet contemplation
in a gallery. These were targeted, aggressive
campaigns for social change. Muckraking was about
digging up the dirt, exposing the corruption,
the institutional failures, and the hidden suffering
of society, and throwing it directly into the
faces of the comfortable classes. This single
black and white photograph of Katie wasn't taken
to be admired for its composition or its lighting.
It was a tool. It was a lever designed to exert
political and social pressure. Reese was using
Katie's image and the stark reality of her story.
to shock the conscience of the public and the
policymakers. And he did it by being hyper -specific.
In his writings, he didn't just talk about the
slums as some vague, abstract concept. He listed
specific addresses. He noted that Kitty lived
on West 49th Street and went to school on West
52nd Street. He is grounding the issue geographically.
For a wealthy New Yorker reading his book in
their comfortable uptown brownstone in 1892,
this was a revelation. The suffering wasn't happening
in some distant quarantine zone. It was happening
right down the street. It forced the reader to
confront the immediate physical proximity of
this extreme poverty. So what does this all mean?
If the goal is to generate public outrage and
demand sweeping legislative reform for child
welfare, why use this specific image? If you
are a muckraker trying to pull at the heartstrings
of Victorian society, you might assume that a
photo of a child openly weeping or looking visibly
terrified and frail would be the most effective
propaganda. But Reese chose Katie. He chose the
indifferent look. Because the tragic normalization
of her suffering is a far more devastating indictment
of society than a moment of panic. A crying child
is a child reacting to an acute, immediate crisis.
But a child who is sober, patient, sturdy. A
child who accepts a stranger's camera without
a single trace of a smile. Hoop casually states
ice grubs as her entire identity. That is a child
whose entire existence has been subsumed by structural
hardship. It shows that the system hasn't just
hurt her, it has fundamentally altered her nature.
Precisely. The dullness of her life wearing on
her day by day is the true muckraking hook. It
communicates to the comfortable classes that
the economic system they benefit from requires
the systemic, daily crushing of a nine -year
-old girl spirit. It shows that her childhood
hasn't just been interrupted, it has been entirely
stolen. And that stolen childhood is a much harder
reality for society to ignore or excuse. It is
a brilliant, if heartbreaking, editorial choice.
And that powerful, unvarnished message has resonated
far beyond the pages of an 1892 reform book.
Let's look at the institutional legacy of ice
grubs. The journey of this specific photograph
over the last century is a fascinating study
in how we value historical documentation. Today,
original prints of this photograph are held in
some of the most prestigious cultural institutions
in the world. They are housed at the Museum of
the City of New York, the Museum of Modern Art,
MoMA in New York. And at the International Center
of Photography, also in New York? MoMA, the International
Center of Photography. These are the absolute
pinnacles of institutional prestige and fine
art. And it wasn't just this one photo. Ries
was incredibly prolific, and many of his works
from this era shared this hallowed status. Think
about images like Bandits Roost from 1888, which
shows the menacing, shadowy alleyways of Mulberry
Bend. Or Lodgers and Baird Street Tenement from
1889, showing a room packed floor to ceiling
with sleeping men. He captured Sabbath Eve in
a coal cellar. The street Arabs showing homeless
children sleeping over subway grates. And The
Trench in Potter's Field around 1890. He extensively
documented the absolute bottom of the social
ladder. What does it mean for a photograph like
Ice Grubs, an image originally intended as a
desperate utilitarian plea for immediate child
welfare reform, printed on the cheap paper of
a political pamphlet, to now be preserved under
climate controlled glass in fine art institutions?
It is a profound transition. It has evolved from
a disposable muck raking tool meant to alert
the public in 1892 into being celebrated as a
masterpiece of 1890s black and white photography.
It speaks to the enduring transcendent power
of the image itself. The artistic merit of the
composition. The stark unforgiving lighting.
The raw, undeniable honesty of Katie's gaze.
These visual elements are so powerful that they
transcend the original, immediate political purpose.
Even though the specific tenements are long gone,
the artistic power of the image continues to
command our attention, forcing us to remember
that history. I am just... marveling at the trajectory
of little Katie. Think about it. This nine -year
-old girl who just wanted to keep her top floor
tenement clean for her siblings, who hauled dirty
water up five flights of stairs, who just wanted
to get through the exhausting day, is now immortalized
alongside the greatest masterworks of human history.
Her quiet, unsmiling endurance is preserved forever
in the halls of MoMA. It is the ultimate testament
to the power of documentation. By acknowledging
someone's daily reality by truly stopping to
see them as Jacob Rees stopped to see Katie.
Asking for her consent rather than ambushing
her. You can create ripples through history that
outlast everyone involved. Her individual hardship
was translated into a universal symbol of endurance.
Let's briefly recap the incredible journey we
have taken on this deep dive. We started on the
grueling top floor of a tenement on West 49th
Street. trying to comprehend the heavy gendered
burden placed on the shoulders of the little
mothers. We watched as Jacob Rees, confronted
with Katie's quiet dignity, evolved his methods,
moving away from the violence of ambush photography
to seeking quiet consent, forever altering the
ethics of the lens. And finally, we followed
that resulting unvarnished image all the way
to the hallowed halls of the Museum of Modern
Art. It is a profound reminder of how acknowledging
a harsh everyday reality can echo through the
centuries. As we wrap up this exploration, I
want to leave you, the listener, with a final
thought to mull over as you go about your week.
We established that when Katie was approached
with the camera, she accepted it without questioning
or smiling. Today, we live in a highly mediated
world where we are constantly conditioned to
smile for the camera. We are trained from infancy
to present an idealized, cheerful, frictionless
version of ourselves, the exact moment a lens
is pointed in our direction. We perform for the
historical record of our own lives. But Katie
gave Jacob Rees, and by extension, the entirety
of history, the radical, unvarnished truth of
her existence. As you capture your own moments
this week, whether on a smartphone or a digital
camera, Think about what nuanced realities are
lost when we instinctively force a smile for
the sake of presentation. And consider what profound
historical truth might be gained when we simply
allow a photograph to capture the unvarnished
reality of exactly who we are and what we are
carrying in that given moment.