Photograph of New York City By Ashley Gilbertson Leads NY Times Magazine Feature

Via The New York Times Sunday Magazine

June 1, 2022

Photograph by Ashley Gilbertson

What Do We Want From Our Next New York?

Decade after decade, waves of migration have remade New York. What kind of city will the latest one create?

 

Images speak louder than words

© Steve Schapiro: I'm Still Alive”, Chicago, 2017

Via The Albuquerque Journal

By Kathaleen Roberts / Journal Staff Writer

Sunday, June 30, 2019 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When visitors walk through Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery, they often say great photojournalism has been relegated to the legacy of World War II and the civil rights movement.
“Living in History” aims to correct that misconception while the press is under continued attack.

Opening on Friday, July 5, the exhibition showcases images documenting subjects and events from the 21st century, including the Occupy Wall Street protests, the Black Lives Matter protests, the Syrian refugee crisis and the U.S.-Mexican border immigration and refugee crisis, among others

“This profession is alive and well, although it’s under tremendous duress,” Michelle Monroe, co-owner of the Santa Fe gallery, said.

The effect of the constellation of platforms available across the internet, social media and cellphones within the past 30 years has diluted and scattered both information and images that used to be concentrated in newspapers and Life magazine, she said.

“There’s material from the Arab Spring; there’s material about the surveillance state post-9/11,” she added.

The prone Chicago protester in Steve Schapiro’s “I’m Still Alive” photo wears a T-shirt encapsulating the Black Lives Matter protests roiling across the U.S. in reaction to the Ferguson, Mo., police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

“He’s making the statement that they have survived, that they are forces to be reckoned with,” Monroe said.

Nina Berman’s “Aftermath” shows 2016 Uranium Remembrance Day in Church Rock. Residents of Navajo communities were calling for an end to uranium mining. One of the largest nuclear catastrophes in U.S. history occurred in 1979 when the dam at the site broke, discharging more than 1,000 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 93 million gallons of radioactive tailings solution into the Rio Puerco. Mining on Navajo land ended, but calls to revive it continue. Residents march to honor all those who died and were sickened by uranium mining and to demand a thorough cleanup and compensation.

Robert Wilson’s 2018 photo of religious leaders being arrested near San Diego for protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration policies sums up the issue in a single frame.

“They’re leaders from all faiths,” Monroe said. “He was traveling with the caravans through Mexico. In order to get these shots, (it’s) what people are compelled to do.”

Ashley Gilbertson’s 2015 photo of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees leaping from a raft near Scala on the island Lesvos, Greece, captures the desperation of the immigrants in the choppy Agean Sea. The exodus of refugees from Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe of more than 1 million people represents the largest movement of people since World War II.

Whitney Curtis caught police officers in riot gear confronting a man with raised hands during a Ferguson protest.

“For us, it looks like a Goya” painting, Monroe said. “But it really looks like the younger generation of civil rights photographers.”

The show features images surveying the past 20 years through the lenses of eight photojournalists.

“It’s a very difficult show,” Monroe said. “The last 19 years have been pretty rough.”

People “leave crying, but they love it.”


If you go
WHAT: “Living in History”
WHEN: Reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, July 5. Through Sept. 22.
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe

HOW MUCH: Free at monroegallery.com, 505-992-0800

Searching for the lost conscience of the nation

My View

The Santa Fe New Mexican

Searching for the lost conscience of the nation 

November 4, 2018

By Ann Lovell Rowe

After my church, the place in town I find most sacred and nourishing is Monroe Gallery at 112 Don Gaspar Ave. The owners continually have remarkable exhibits of photojournalism taking us back through our history and bringing us new, solid contemporary history.

Recently, their opening was of a photographer, Stephen Wilkes, and his work documenting the hospital island, one of the three islands that make up Ellis Island. The photos are deeply beautiful and profound, with light streaming through the abandoned buildings. Beside the photos are stories and words of people who were at the hospital; stories of making it through the process of entering our country.

One poignant memory for me was a little girl who had had polio and braces on her legs; her parents dressed her in a long skirt, and she made it through. There was much sadness there — long delays and being turned away — but there was a process. There was an understanding that receiving refugees and immigrants was an ordered part of our government and done with integrity.

Leaving the gallery, my husband and I walked toward San Francisco Street. Carefully settled at the opening to the parking lot was one of the homeless we see there often, a very attractive man with a nice white beard and very blue eyes, playing his guitar. We stopped to listen. Around him were several small packs and a small tag that said “Washington, D.C.” He was singing the folk song of Woody Guthrie, “Deportees.” It is a song of names — names of people killed when an airplane carrying these migrants back to Mexico crashed near our border. He said he was on his way to D.C. to sing there. A homeless troubadour. A true troubadour with a message. I wonder if he will make it to D.C., but for now he is singing for us.

The song tells the history of migrant workers who had finished the harvest of oranges and crops in California, and the overseer had sent them home by plane. The plane crashed, and they were buried in a common grave. Guthrie heard of this and went to Mexico to find the families of those killed. He found them, and the names of their loved ones, and returned to the site with grave markers with each of the names. And wrote this song. At the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Oct. 25, Joan Baez sang his song, but without telling the story; Arlo Guthrie has told it at his concerts at the Lensic, so I knew it immediately. Most don’t know the context. We need to know the song and remember that history.

Today we live with the most awful atrocities committed daily to our refugees and immigrants. A friend, a lawyer and former judge, just sent an email with the story of a foster family for one of the lost children who tried to adopt the child away from the parents. She was filled with tears and terror. Somehow, she was reunited with her mother. One example of the lost conscience of our country.

Ann Lovell Rowe is a writer and photographer who lives in Santa Fe.

---

STEPHEN WILKES: ELLIS ISLAND, GHOSTS OF OUR ANCESTORS

Isolation ward, Statue of Liberty, Island 3, Ellis Island

On the 20th anniversary of Stephen Wilkes documentary project photographing the abandoned buildings on the southern side of Ellis Island, and with the future of immigration and refuge in America in contention, Wilkes takes us on an unforgettable journey through our collective past that reminds us how we became the diverse nation that we are today and asks us to reflect on our own humanity.

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present “Ellis Island: Ghosts of Our Ancestors”, a timely exhibition which opens with a public reception for the photographer on Friday, October 5, from 5 – 7 PM. The exhibition continues through November 18.

Twelve million people passed through Ellis Island from 1892 until its closing in 1954, and tens of millions of Americans today are descendants of immigrants who were thought deplorable by those already here. Wilkes's powerful images of the underbelly of the island—a purgatory between freedom and captivity—ask us to reflect on the defining experiences of millions. Photographed over five years beginning in 1998, the photographs are a visual history of the immigration center and adjoining hospital which grew to 22 medical buildings spread across three islands. In the era before antibiotics, tens of thousands of immigrant patients were healed from illness before becoming citizens. Neglected for almost fifty years, the buildings were in a state of extreme disrepair: lead paint peeled from the ceilings and walls, vines and trees grew through the floorboards, detritus and debris littered the hallways. In rooms long-abandoned, Wilkes captured a spirited new vision of this gateway to freedom.


“I photographed every corner, every crevice, in every light. Strange things happened. I’d photograph a mirror attached to a wall for half a century, only to return and find the mirror shattered. I’d photograph a shoe, only to come back and find it disappeared. I photographed the 500-foot long spine of the hospital, Corridor #9, a long tunnel of decay. In the photograph of it, you’ll see a golden glow of sunshine warming the walls at the far end. In all the times I went back, I’ve never seen this glow again, nor can I figure out its origin.

What I was obsessed to do, almost as if I was chosen to do it, was document the light and the energy and living spirit of this place. I added no light of my own, nor any artifice of the photographic craft. I wasn’t simply interested in graphics born from the patina of ruin. I just wanted to record the place as I found it.”


– Stephen Wilkes

Monroe Gallery at AIPAD: Photography as history and photography as visual evidence

Irving Haberman

Holocaust Survivors arrive in New York City, 1947

Vintage gelatin silver print

 Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM, will dedicate much of its exhibit at the 2017 AIPAD Photography Show to images that exemplify photography as history and photography as visual evidence . Recently, documentary evidence has been denied or disputed by those in power, and coupled with the new administrations attacks on the press, the exhibit is a reminder that photojournalism is a vital and necessary component of a free society.

Steve Schapiro, along with many other photographers of the civil rights era, not only brought awareness to the injustice of racial discrimination; they made people feel the injustice. The Gallery will exhibit several of Schapiro’s iconic civil rights era photographs, including James Baldwin in Harlem (1963), Martin Luther King marching for voting rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, (1965), and John Lewis in Clarksdale, Mississippi (1963) alongside several photographs of the 2015 refugee crisis in Greece, the Balkans and Germany by Ashley Gilbertson, VII photographer and author of the book Bedrooms of The Fallen. There will also be vintage photographs of refugee immigrants to the United States by Irving Haberman and Eddie Adams, as well as a large format color print of the abandoned Ellis Island Tuberculosis Ward by Stephen Wilkes.

Ashley Gilbertson

Refugees, primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, disembark on the island of Lesvos, Greece, 2015

Archival Pigment print

Another featured photograph is one Ashley Gilbertson made earlier this year of Trump Tower in response  to President Trump’s attacks on the press: “I want the president to know we will not cease in our attempts to provide transparency, hold those in power accountable, and report on issues that affect us as a global community. As always, our armor is honesty, hardened and honed by our fact checkers and editors. Our mission as the fourth estate didn't change on Friday–it remains the same as it always has. Truth to power.”

Ashley Gilbertson: Trump Tower, New York, 2017

Archival pigment print

Rounding out our exhibit are significant prints from two 94-year old master photojournalists, Art Shay and Tony Vaccaro.

Rounding out our exhibit are significant prints from two 94-year old master photojournalists, Art Shay and Tony Vaccaro.

At the age of 21, Tony Vaccaro was drafted into World War II, and by the spring of 1944 he was photographing war games in Wales. By June, now a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division, he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach, six days after the first landings at Normandy. Denied access to the Signal Corps, Tony was determined to photograph the war, and had his portable 35mm Argus C-3 with him from the start. For the next 272 days, Tony fought on the front lines of the war. He entered Germany in December 1944, a private in the Intelligence Platoon, tasked with going behind enemy lines at night. The HBO documentary film “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro” tells the story of how Tony survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone.

 After the war, Tony remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars And Stripes magazine. Returning to the US in 1950, Tony started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Look, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Newsweek, and many more. Tony went on to become one the most sought after photographers of his day, photographing everyone from Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren to Pablo Picasso and Frank Lloyd Wright. Now 94, Tony still carries a camera and will be present in our booth #534 on Friday afternoon, March 30 during the AIPAD Photography Show.

Monroe Gallery of Photography will exhibit in booth #534 during the AIPAD Photography Show March 30 - April 2, 2017.

“Unframed — Ellis Island,” by the French artist JR; Inspired by Stephen Wilkes

Stephen Wilkes: Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3, Ellis Island

Via The New York Times




A new installation, “Unframed — Ellis Island,” by the French artist JR, which brings this landmark building, its patients and staff members, to grainy but wrenching life. It is the first time in 60 years that the Ellis Island hospital has been open to the public. Tickets go on sale Thursday for guided tours that begin on Oct. 1.


Unframed — Ellis Island” is part of JR’s larger “Unframed” series that puts archival photos in new contexts in places like Marseille, France; São Paulo, Brazil; and Washington. He was introduced to this project by a book, “Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom,” the photographer Stephen Wilkes’s exploration of the hospital in its wildest state, and quickly became obsessed with the grounds. Finishing the installation this month, he and his small team would arrive in the morning and wander all day, scouting out homes for their century-old charges, before taking the tourist ferry back to Manhattan, toting ladders and paste buckets.

“It’s a really powerful place,” said Mr. Wilkes, who photographed it the hospital from 1998 to 2003, and is now on the board of Save Ellis Island. He was particularly moved by the realization that some patients could see the Statue of Liberty from their sickbeds. “She’s so close, and for many people who came to America and who never got out of that hospital, they never got to see any more than that,” Mr. Wilkes said.

Their emotion lingered. “I would feel almost human energy in these empty rooms,” he said.

Read the full article here.

View Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island collection here.

STEVE SCHAPIRO: "The Photo That Made Me"

The Bean Pickers, Arkansas, 1961

TIME LightBox talks to Steve Schapiro as part of the series ‘The Photo That Made Me,’ in which photographers tell us about the one photograph they made that they believe jump-started their career, garnered them international attention, or simply sparked an interest in photography.


Related: Steve Schapiro: Once Upon Upon A Time In America exhibition continues through September 21, 2014

FREEDOM RIDE: 2012

Via The New York Times


Editorial
Migrants’ Freedom Ride
Published: July 28, 2012


 On Sunday night or early Monday, about three dozen people are planning to set out on a six-week bus voyage through the dark terrain of American immigration politics. Their journey is to begin, fittingly, in the desert in Arizona, national capital of anti-immigrant laws and oppressive policing. It will wind through other states where laws and failed policies force immigrants to toil outside the law — New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee — and end in North Carolina at the Democratic National Convention.       

There the riders plan to deliver a defiant message to a president who is hoping to return to office on a wave of Latino support that they believe he has not earned.
      

There is something very different about this particular protest. Many of those planning to ride the bus are undocumented and — for the first time — are not afraid to say so. Immigrants who dread arrest and deportation usually seek anonymity. These riders, weary of life in the shadows and frustrated by the lack of progress toward reform, will be telling federal authorities and the local police: Here are our names. This is our plan. If you want us, come get us.

      

The momentum for this daring ride, called the “UndocuBus,” began building last Tuesday at the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix. The immigrants’ nemesis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, was testifying at trial that day about his office’s long history of racial profiling and discriminatory policing. Out on the street, the midday glare off the pavement was blinding. Four unauthorized immigrants — Leticia Ramirez, Miguel Guerra, Natally Cruz and Isela Meraz — sat blocking traffic and waited to be arrested. They were taken away in cuffs to spend the night at Sheriff Arpaio’s red-brick jail on Fourth Avenue.

      

Their civil disobedience should not have been necessary. Hopes for reform were high in 2006, a year of huge, peaceful pro-immigrant marches in cities across the country, after which Congress entertained comprehensive reform that had strong bipartisan support. But Republicans killed the bill, and the years of inaction that followed crushed immigrants’ hopes while reinforcing the broken status quo — to the benefit of border vigilantes, the private-prison industry, the engorged homeland security apparatus and hard-right ideologues who started planting neo-nativist laws in legislatures across the land, starting in Arizona.

      

As Sheriff Arpaio quickly recognized, demonizing the undocumented was a potent political tool: once an immigration moderate, he recast himself as a relentless hunter of “illegal aliens.” With federal powers delegated to him by the Homeland Security Department, he spent years conducting “saturation patrols” in Latino neighborhoods of Maricopa County, abusing and terrifying those with brown skin.

      

All this time, as promises were broken and reforms went nowhere, as President Obama ratcheted up deportations to record levels, and as Republicans intensified their assaults, the immigrants lay low. But then groups of students, working outside the regular channels of immigrant advocacy, bravely “came out” as undocumented and demanded justice — and won from Mr. Obama a promise not to deport them.

      

A few more immigrants have now chosen to come out of the shadows. It is impossible to know how many of the 10 million to 12 million undocumented might dare to do the same. And while each and every one of them deserves a chance to get right with the law, one provocative bus trip may well seem like a voyage to nowhere, given the dismal state of Congress and the low odds of immigration reform.

      

But this small group has already won an important victory, a victory against fear. At the cramped offices of Puente Arizona, the Phoenix organization behind the “UndocuBus,” volunteers kept busy last week updating calendars and working phone banks. They made papier-mâché masks and silk-screen posters, and decorated plastic buckets for drumming. There was packing to be done, a bus to be painted. Saturday was the day for a march, Sunday will be for the gathering in a city park, for eating, singing and saying goodbyes. After that, the bus will roll.

Related: 50 years later, Freedom Rides still resonate

          On January 1, 1892; Annie Moore, a 15 year-old Irish girl, accompanied by her two brothers entered history and a new country as she was the very first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island.     Over the next 62 years, more than 12  million immigrants  were to follow through this port of entry.

On Ellis Island, Examining Those Who Arrived Before and After

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Stephen Wilkes: Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3

Via The New York Times

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is expanding its scope to include all immigrants,

not just who arrived on the island.

Officials of Ellis Island estimate that as many as one in three Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who landed there from overseas.

Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.

“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.
And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”

As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.

Full article here.

American Express Gives $100,000 to Help Ellis Island Group

Stephen Wilkes: Corridor #9, Island 2, Ellis Island

Back in April, we wrote about an article by Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times reporting that "Save Ellis Island, a nonprofit charged with restoring that historic immigrant gateway to America, may not be able to save itself. The group has run out of money." There was an urgent appeal: Funds Sought to Continue Restoration at Ellis Island; abandoned buildings on the southern side of Ellis Island immortalized in Stephen Wilkes' photographs.

Today, The New York Times reports that "American Express Gives $100,000 to Help Ellis Island Group".

By Robin Pogrebin


On the brink of extinction last spring, the nonprofit organization charged with restoring Ellis Island will benefit from a $100,000 gift from American Express, the credit card company is to announce on Thursday.

"It’s an enormous boost,” said Judith R. McAlpin, the president of the organization, Save Ellis Island. “American Express has long been associated with the very best in historic preservation. It’s like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”

The donation, the company said, was prompted by an article in The New York Times about how Save Ellis Island was struggling to continue the restoration of 29 buildings on the 27.5 acre historic immigrant gateway to America. “We’re trying to help them help themselves so they’re able to raise more money not just for the restoration of the buildings — they need general operating support,” Timothy J. McClimon, president of the American Express Foundation, said. “People are in love with the buildings, they’re passionate about the buildings — that’s kind of the easy money. But how do you sustain yourself as an organization?”

What Save Ellis Island needs most, Mr. McClimon said, is to build its fund-raising capacity by strengthening its board and development staff. As a result, American Express will make its donation through the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which will provide expertise. The trust included Ellis Island on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places twice in the 1990s.

Mr. McClimon left open the possibility that American Express might contribute more in the future. “We’re very positive about Save Ellis Island,” he said. “We think they have great potential.”

See Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island Collection here.

.

REMINDER: HELP SAVE ELLIS ISLAND THIS SUNDAY, NOV. 7

Stephen Wilkes: Corridor #9, Island 3, Ellis Island

On Sunday, November 7, join the Save Ellis Island Foundation for a very special tour and talk with Stephen Wilkes.


Included will be an illustrated presentation by renowned photographer Stephen Wilkes, who will discuss his work and the personal project that involved photographing the south side of Ellis Island...the inspiration for his poignant book "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom".

For the very first time, since the book was published, Stephen Wilkes visits Ellis Island to present his work, taking us on a journey to our collective past. The event begins at 10:00 am, starting with a fabulous brunch followed by Stephen's presentation and finally a emotional and inspirational walking tour of the unrestored south side Hospital Buildings.

More information and details here.

NPR PICTURE SHOW: EERIE ELLIS ISLAND with photos by Stephen Wilkes

Nation Public Radio

by Claire O'Neill

August 20, 2010
In grade school, I was obsessed with Ellis Island, which I attribute to a fascination with my grandmother's Irish accent. In my mind, it was a bustling, brimming, turn of the century checkpoint for immigrants in search of brighter prospects.

Corridor #9, Island 3: "There was a palatable sense of collaboration with an unknown force when I made this photograph. Red afternoon sunlight created an aura at the end of the corridor unlike any light I have ever seen"--Stephen Wilkes

 

In Stephen Wilkes' mind, on the other hand, Ellis Island means decay. He discovered the island's abandoned hospitals while on a photo assignment in the 1990s, and it quickly devolved into obsession (of course, I can sympathize). For five years he had free reign of the island's ghostly buildings.

Wilkes' photo project, Ellis Island: Ghosts Of Freedom, shows the somber side of immigration — the side you don't see while on island tours. For many, the dream of a better life terminated in Ellis Island hospitals, where they were detained at any sign of disease. In one of Wilkes' images, the Statue of Liberty is reflected in a mirror. "I suddenly imagined a petite Eastern European woman rising out of her bed every morning," he writes in the caption."Seeing the reflection would be the closest she'd ever come to freedom."


The hospitals were closed in 1954 and basically left untouched, except by the elements of nature, and unseen, until Wilkes came along. Empty rooms, peeling paint, a lonely shoe left on a table — this deterioration is what Wilkes finds beautiful. His meditative studies of light and composition guide the viewer through Ellis Island's dark side, oddly illuminated by an afternoon glow.

His book was featured on Weekend Edition Saturday in 2006; and now, his photographs are part of a new exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum outside of Philadelphia. (Related review here) Brian Peterson, the exhibition curator, has made an interesting contrast by pairing Wilkes' color prints with the early documentary photographs of Lewis Hine.

Ellis Island, 1926 

Lewis W. Hine/Courtesy of George Eastman House

I've never actually visited Ellis Island, but after seeing Wilkes photographs, I just might have to revisit and old obsession.
 
 
Original post here with slide show of photographs.
 
©National Public Radio

STEPHEN WILKES - ELLIS ISLAND: GHOSTS OF FREEDOM

Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom

June 26 through October 10, 2010

Stephen Wilkes: Corridor #9, Ellis Island

Fred Beans Gallery - James A. Michener Art Museum

It's hard to imagine a place that says more about the American experience than Ellis Island. For twelve million people, Ellis Island was the doorway to a new life. The hopes and dreams of several generations of immigrants began and sometimes ended there, and there are few American families who can't trace their heritage back to someone whose first footsteps on American soil happened at Ellis Island. For five years, renowned photographer Stephen Wilkes had free reign of the island's hospital complex. Neglected for nearly fifty years, the buildings were in an extreme state of disrepair: lead paint peeled from the ceilings and walls, vines and trees grew through the floorboards of once cramped wards. In these long-abandoned spaces, Wilkes discovered an unyielding solitude, yet also found undeniable evidence of life, not only in the implicit remembrances of the people who resided there, but in the radiant, beckoning light in which these scenes were captured.

Organized by the Michener Art Museum with the cooperation the George Eastman House, Rochester, and ClampArt Gallery, New York, this exhibition presents a selection of Wilkes's evocative contemporary images of Ellis Island as well as a group of vintage prints from the Eastman House collection by the legendary photographer Lewis Hine (1874-1940), who began documenting the immigrant experience around 1904 and produced a major body of work focusing specifically on Ellis Island.

View the full collection of Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island photographs here.



James A. Michener Art Museum

138 South Pine Street
Doylestown, PA
Tuesday through Friday: 10 am to 4:30 pm

Saturday: 10 am to 5 pm
Sunday: 12 pm to 5 pm
More information
Map here

SAVE ELLIS ISLAND FOUNDATION NEEDS HELP

Funds Sought to Continue Restoration at Ellis Island; abandoned buildings on the southern side of Ellis Island immortalized in Stephen Wilkes' photographs.

Corridor #9, Ellis Island

An article by Robin Pogrebin in today's New York Times reports that "Save Ellis Island, a nonprofit charged with restoring that historic immigrant gateway to America, may not be able to save itself. The group has run out of money."

"We’re not able to keep it going a whole lot longer,” its president, Judith R. McAlpin, said in an interview. She added that the group, which recently posted an “urgent appeal” for donations on its Web site (www.saveellisisland.org/site/PageServer), needs to raise about $500,000 in the next few weeks if it is to survive. If it does not, Save Ellis Island will have to return $512,000 in grants that it has already received to restore 30 buildings and repurpose them for public benefit, Ms. McAlpin said, and work on current projects will be suspended."

"Ellis Island, which closed as an immigrant-processing center in 1954, has remained a serious concern for preservationists in the years since the main building was restored and opened as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1990. Most of the remaining buildings — many on the island’s south side — have remained unused and in disrepair"

Read the full article here.

In 1998 Stephen Wilkes started a personal project photographing the south side of Ellis Island: the ruined landscape of the infectious disease and phychiatric hospital wings, where children and adults alike were detained before they could enter America. Through his photographs and video work, Wilkes  inspired and helped secure an initial $6 million in funding towards the restoration for the south side of the island.

Stephen Wilkes created a remarkable collection of large format color cibachrome photographs of the abandoned buildings on the southern side of Ellis Island. Photographed over five years (1998 - 2003), the collection was published in 2006 in the monograph "Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom".  Wilkes' photographs capture the haunting beauty of the century old buildings and are a rich visual tapestry evoking the ghosts of the millions of immigrants who passed through these halls on their first stop in America.

The World Monuments Fund put the island on its watch list of threatened sites in 1996 and 2006. The National Trust for Historic Preservation included Ellis Island on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places twice in the 1990s.

We urge all to help save this landmark gateway to America. Please go to Save Ellis Island today.









“We’re not able to keep it going a whole lot longer,” its president, Judith R. McAlpin, said in an interview. She added that the group, which recently posted an “urgent appeal” for donations on its Web site (www.saveellisisland.org/site/PageServer), needs to raise about $500,000 in the next few weeks if it is to survive. If it does not, Save Ellis Island will have to return $512,000 in grants that it has already received to restore 30 buildings and repurpose them for public benefit, Ms. McAlpin said, and work on current projects will be suspended.



Save Ellis Island has been hurt not only by the decline in donations caused by the economic downturn, but also by major spending cuts from New Jersey, one of its longtime benefactors.



Ellis Island, which closed as an immigrant-processing center in 1954, has remained a serious concern for preservationists in the years since the main building was restored and opened as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1990. Most of the remaining buildings — many on the island’s south side — have remained unused and in disrepair.



The World Monuments Fund put the island on its watch list of threatened sites in 1996 and 2006. The National Trust for Historic Preservation included Ellis Island on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places twice in the 1990s.



“Save Ellis Island has done a very good job of marshalling us,” said Richard Moe, the president of the National Trust, who serves on the Ellis Island group’s board. “We need an organization that’s solely focused on Ellis Island because this is such a significant historical site.”



Save Ellis Island says that it has to conduct a large-scale fund-raising drive if it hopes to cover the $350 million still needed for the renovations, but that it has been unable to get approval from the National Park Service, which oversees the island and the nearby Statue of Liberty.



“We’re lacking a public commitment to the campaign” from the Park Service, Ms. McAlpin said.



David Luchsinger, the Park Service’s superintendent of the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, said the agency had been waiting for a feasibility study and strategic plan from Save Ellis Island. “We’ve been very supportive of them, trying to help them out in any way we can; we would like them to continue to be around,” Mr. Luchsinger said.



But Ms. McAlpin said that her organization believed that it could not complete a feasibility study without knowing if it could count on federal support. In recent years the United States Department of the Interior has contributed to the rehabilitation of Ellis Island, but no funds were appropriated for the island for the 2011 fiscal year.



Save Ellis Island said it had hoped to support its efforts with financing from a for-profit partner, which might, for example, hold conventions on the island. But the Park Service said certain agreements had to be in place before that move would be considered. This decision, Ms. McAlpin said, left Save Ellis Island more dependent on public funds and private contributions.



Mr. Luchsinger said the Park Service would continue to maintain and improve the island with whatever money is made available. “We’re going to continue to try to do our part as best we can, given the allocations,” he said. “Whether Save Ellis Island is here or not, that is our obligation.”



Save Ellis Island was established by a group of New York preservationists in 1999 to serve as a nonprofit partner for the Park Service, with the goal of rehabilitating the buildings. In 2007 the organization completed the restoration of the Ferry Building, a long hall built in Art Deco style by the federal Public Works Administration, which served as the departure point for immigrants who had passed their health and legal inspections. The Laundry/Hospital Outbuilding — which still holds machinery that washed, sterilized and dried the bedding of immigrant patients — is about 70 percent complete, Ms. McAlpin said.



“If we can’t save Ellis Island, I’d be pretty discouraged,” said Peg Breen, the president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, an advocacy group, who also serves on the island organization’s board. “There is a great story of America at its best out there. It would be a shame for this country if the south side of Ellis Island never happens.”



Save Ellis Island, which has an annual operating budget of $1.2 million, cut its staff to four from seven last Thursday; at its peak the organization had about 12 full-time staff members.



Most of Ellis Island’s 27.5 acres fall under New Jersey’s jurisdiction; the state fought New York and won sovereignty in a 1998 Supreme Court ruling after Christine Todd Whitman, the governor of New Jersey at the time, made Ellis Island a personal cause. In 2000 she announced the plan for the island’s redevelopment, to be overseen by Save Ellis Island and financed with private and public contributions.



“As New Jerseyans, we take great pride in our history,” she said at a news conference. “But we must also take care of our history so that future generations can share our pride and visit these landmarks of our national journey.”



New Jersey has contributed as much as $650,000 a year toward Save Ellis Island’s general operating funds, Ms. McAlpin said, but that figure dropped to zero for its 2011 budget, and the state is under no obligation to support Ellis Island.



New York State, which retains minority control of the island, has not given any funds, Ms. McAlpin said. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said through a spokesman that she was working with senators from New Jersey to encourage Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, “and the interior appropriations subcommittee to secure the funding Ellis Island needs to continue operations and for much-needed upgrades to the park’s infrastructure.”



Still, the lack of government support is one of several problems that are making it increasingly difficult for Save Ellis Island to stay afloat.



“It just makes me unspeakably sad,” Ms. McAlpin said. “This perfect storm of elements have come together and brought us to a stop.”