RIIS, JACOB. How the Other Half Lives. New York: Charles' Scribner's Sons, 1901. First edition. Original dark blue cloth spine, gilt lettered, pictorially printed paper boards. 7 1/2 x 5 inches (19 x 12.5 cm); xv, [1], 304 pp., half title, frontispiece, illustrations. A sound copy of a fragile work usually found in poor condition due to its heft, some scattered staining to boards, toning to title from tissue guard, some light spotting to edges and margins, bookplate of David Bixler with offset to endpaper.

First edition of a landmark work: "One of the most important photobooks ever published, 'How the Other Half Lives' represents the first extensive use of halftone photographic reproductions in a book. It is the beginning, not of a photographic genre, but a photographic attitude, an ethos - humanist documentary photography - in which the photographic social document is employed to bear critical witness to what is going on in the world." Parr & Badger, The Photobook, p.53.