Richard Morris Hunt's Home Of An Italian Ragpicker, Jersey Street

Richard Morris Hunt’s mansion depicts a large mansion build in 1895 owned by one of America’s leading architects of the 19th century. He implanted a high Victorian Goth architectural design for the construction of this large mansion. This mansion covers four acres of floor space, has 250 rooms, an indoor swimming pool, priceless artworks, and adorned furnishings; the epitome of wealth.
Home of an Italian Ragpicker, Jersey Street presents a poor Italian immigrant mother with her baby in her harms, sitting in a small room fill with wooden pickets, a single hat, bags, and a wooden ladder. This image shows what it was like to live in poverty in New York. Jacob Rii’s used this photograph in his book, How the Other Half Lives. This book contains nothing but images of men, women, and children living in poverty. It is an amazing way to show literally show ‘how the other half’ of the social class had to

Hunt’s mansion is a large scale photo so show all he owns, while the other photo is more honed in to show what little the woman owns. As an observer I see his wealth before I see his humanity; I see the money before I see the man. The photograph Home of an Italian Ragpicker, Jersey Street only shows the woman and child in poor living conditions. She literally has nothing else to represent herself except herself, her child, and her living conditions. Unlike Hunt, we can see the woman for who she is and someone can immediately feel emotions towards her, and see her as a human being. This makes me feel as if wealth takes away the humanity in a person where we, sometimes, see a person’s wealth before we see the person for who they are. Yet, if a person has no material possessions to represent themselves except their existence then we see that person from a more human