Jacob Riis — 'Bandit's Roost' (1888)

Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant turned police reporter, carried a camera and the new magnesium flash powder into New York's darkest tenement alleys. 'Bandit's Roost,' made in 1888 off Mulberry Street, looks straight down a narrow, laundry-hung passage where loitering men stare back at the lens — one of the images that fueled his 1890 exposé 'How the Other Half Lives' and helped launch American photojournalism and slum reform.

The deep one-point perspective pulls the eye into a claustrophobic funnel of brick, while the raw flash flattens faces and throws hard shadows that make the squalor feel unsanitized. Riis died in 1914, so his photographs are public domain.

Where to look / how to shoot it: use a strong central corridor — an alley, hallway, or street — so the walls converge and draw the viewer in. Put a wary human presence at the vanishing point. Harsh, direct light (or on-camera flash after dark) suits the unvarnished, documentary honesty.