SOURCE: "Flashes from the Slums: Pictures in Dark Places by the Lighting Process," in Photography: Essays & Images, edited by Beaumont Newhall, The Museum of Modern Art, 1980, pp. 154-57.

In the following essay, which originally appeared in the New York Sun, Riis comments on some of his photographs.

With their way illuminated by spasmodic flashes, as bright and sharp and brief as those of the lightning itself, a mysterious party has lately been startling the town o' nights. Somnolent policemen on the street, denizens of the dives in their dens, tramps and bummers in their socalled lodgings, and all the people of the wild and wonderful variety of New York night life have in their turn marvelled at and been frightened by the phenomenon. What they saw was three or four figures in the gloom, a ghostly tripod, some weird and uncanny movements, the blinding flash, and then they...