Ellis Island: Portraits of Immigrants

Late in the nineteenth century, New York's state-run system for processing immigrants became overwhelmed by the sheer number of its charges. The newly created federal Bureau of Immigration took over and swiftly settled on Ellis Island as its processing center. The center accepted its first customer-a fifteen-year-old Irish girl-on January 1, 1892. Ellis Island's clientele arrived in America via steerage: immigrants with the means to travel first or second class were processed aboard their ships and delivered directly to Manhattan. Photographed in the clothing traditional to the lands they left-lederhosen, kilts (Scottish and Greek varieties), embroidered vests, djellabas, headgear too various to name-newcomers fill the pages of this book of postcards. The clothes are interesting for their suggestion that the world was bigger, wilder, woollier, and almost unimaginably more diverse than it is now. But the antique faces, with expressions ranging from dour to deadpan to delighted, are the things that make these duotone images so satisfying.