Swimmers in fancy costume take part in the New Year's Day swim at Saundersfoot in Wales, Britain, January 1, 2017. (Photo by Rebecca Naden/Reuters)

Models wait backstage ahead of the Eugenia Kim Spring/Summer 2018 fashion show during New York Fashion Week in New York, U.S., September 10, 2017. (Photo by Amr Alfiky/Reuters)

A local wears a plastic water bottle with a cutout to cover her face, as she walks on a footbridge in Hong Kong on January 31, 2020, as a preventative measure following a virus outbreak which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The World Health Organization, which initially downplayed the severity of a disease that has now killed 170 nationwide, warned all governments to be “on alert” as it weighed whether to declare a global health emergency. (Photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP Photo)

A mother reacts as she pleads with police to allow her daughter to pass a checkpoint for cancer treatment after she arrived from Hubei province at the Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge in Jiujiang, China, February 1, 2020. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A model has her hair done backstage before the Taoray Wang fashion show during New York Fashion Week in New York, New York, 09 February 2019. New York Fashion Week for designer's autumn and winter lines is being held from 06 to 13 February 2019. (Photo by Peter Foley/EPA/EFE)

Visitors at the National Zoo check out a parrotfish made from found waste from the ocean in Washington, DC on May 23, 2016. The artwork can be seen at the National Zoo until September 5th. (Photo by Keith Lane/The Washington Post)

Students play in their school yard on the first day of the new school term at a primary school in Baghdad, October 18, 2015. (Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters)

Drastic inequality is by no means new in New York. Jacob A. Riis was called a muckraker after he chose to spotlight the city’s poverty at the turn of the 20th century by photographing it. Here: Sweatshop in Hester Street, 1889-1890. (Photo by Jacob A. Riis/Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis)