Housing, Conditions: United States. New Jersey. Newark: Housing Conditions in Newark, New Jersey: Shacks erected on unbuilt streets near the city line. Land between houses is being filled with waste paper and garbage. c. 1903

Curator: The squalor in this stark photographic diptych is striking. Jessie Tarbox Beals captured these housing conditions in Newark, New Jersey. The medium is gelatin silver print. Editor: It’s hard to ignore the sheer volume of waste. The materials are presented to us bluntly – garbage and rudimentary housing. I'm struck by the contrast between the intent of home-building and the reality of these conditions. Curator: Exactly. Beals was a pioneering female photojournalist who often focused on marginalized communities. This work underscores the systemic inequalities in housing and sanitation affecting the poor in early 20th-century urban America. Consider the absence of infrastructure. Editor: The lack of sanitation speaks volumes, literally. The refuse is integral; it points directly to failed systems. Whose labor maintains, or fails to maintain, these spaces? Where does the waste stream lead? Curator: It forces us to consider intersections of race, class, and gender. Who is afforded dignity, and who is not? Editor: The photographs compel us to confront the unvarnished reality of how material conditions shape lives. Curator: It's a crucial reminder of the human cost of inequitable policies.