“[Photographers are] the Human Document to keep the present and the future in touch with the past” – Lewis Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940)
talian child finds her first penny, 1926, Ellis Island
A social worker at Ellis Island, 1926
You can learn more about Hine’s work here, the teacher who saw photography as a means to achieve social reform. A teacher of botany and nature studies at the Ethical Culture School in New York, Hine was given a camera by the head of the school. In his hand, the camera became a powerful means of recording the human condition.
The people in these pictures did not pass the border checks and gain employment in fulfilling work. They would be the underclass, the poor who would in the USA at least be allowed to live and try for a better life.
A Syrian Arab at Ellis Island, 1926
Slavic mother and child at Ellis Island, 1905
Slavic immigrant at Ellis Island. 1905
Jew from Russia at Ellis Island, 1905
A Finnish stowaway at Ellis Island, 1926
Armenian Jew, Ellis Island, 1926
A Slovak Immigrant, Ellis Island, 1905
Immigrants detained at Ellis Island; take time to be happy, 1926.
An Albanian woman from Italy at Ellis Island, 1905
Joys and sorrows at Ellis Island, 1905
Jewish grandmother, Ellis Island, 1926
Young Russian Jewess at Ellis Island, 1905
Mother and child, Italian Ellis Island, 1905
A Czecho Slovak grandmother at Ellis Island, 1926
Italian grandmother at Ellis Island, 1926
A Slovak Immigrant, Ellis Island, 1905
Mona Lisa visits Ellis Island, 1905
A group of German immigrants at Ellis Island, 1926
Italian family enroute to Ellis Island
Italian family enroute to Ellis Island
A woman, a boy and a girl at a chain link fence, Ellis Island, New York
Spotter: NYPL
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