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• 1 media/servian-gipsies-1904.jpg media/background-2.jpg media/statue-of-liberty-1930s.jpg 2018-12-04T18:55:09-08:00 Servian Gipsies [1904] 2 plain 2019-12-16T02:06:07-08:00

  Roma in suspended anonymity

  Captions or annotations were at times included on early prints of Sherman's photographs. Sherman himself made some of the these but others did so as well, possibly years after the photos were shot. Such annotations may appear to be invitations to explore identity further, though in reality many are vague, misleading, or reflect a eugenics-influenced focus on "racial types". The date for Sherman's Servian Gipsies [sic] has been recorded or ascribed to different photographic prints as 1902, 1905 and 1906 and also captioned Hungarian Gypsies and Slovenian Gypsies. The conflicting dates and ethnicities makes research into the subjects' identity prohibitive, but after discovering that Sherman's photos had a habit of turning up in a variety of contemporaneous publications (newspapers, books, periodicals, government documents), it becomes easier for the researcher to set boundaries by comparing dates and usage.[i]
  
  Locating any relatively concurrent use or commentary is an essential step in deciphering anonymous but widely circulated photographs. In the case of Sherman's Servian Gipsies, there were a number, with one standing out as the earliest known use of the photo: a New York Times article from 12 February 1905 titled "Four Years of Progress at Ellis Island". This full-page article reproduced the above image with the following caption: 'Hungarian Gypsies, all of whom were deported'. Though the caption wasn't specific as to when the subjects were deported, the publication date was first clue to help me narrow the search and eliminate some of the attributed dates. Because the photo was shot outdoors and the subjects are hardly dressed for a New York winter, my first assumption was that the photo dated from at least the summer or early fall of the previous year, i.e. 1904, so I started a more focused search.
  
  Digging deeper into newspapers and periodicals from the time period for any mention about the arrival and/or deportation of Roma peoples, I discovered a few patterns: Roma were periodically getting press and all of it was disparaging, playing up despicable stereotypes that persist to this day. They were kidnapping babies, casting spells on whites, stealing, menacing upright citizens, poisoning wells—and more and more were slipping across the borders, or at least trying to do so. 1904 was a particularly busy year for this ethnic group in the U.S. and Canadian press. Dozens of syndicated stories reported on their constant movements, suspicious activities, and deportations. Among the reports, few have anything remotely positive to say about the behavior of Roma in North America.
  
  I eventually located what appeared to be a likely match with Sherman's photo, again in the New York Times but also repeated in The Evening World. As it turned out, the brief article from August 1904 gave some crucial detail while leaving out certain key facts, simultaneously revealing both the institutional and popular prejudice of the time. And the fact that the subsequent 1905 article referenced the group's earlier deportation indicated that the NY Times journalists were already familiar with the story, or that Sherman supplied them with that information along with the photograph when interviewing William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, and others at Ellis Island for the lengthy 1905 article. In any case, deportations were rare at Ellis Island, typically running at about 2% of all arrivals, so the chances of a mismatch become less likely. Of course newspapers didn't report on all deportations, but ones that were unusual or exotic in terms of ethnic composition, (Roma, Chinese, South Asians, North Africans, etc.), violent or salacious, garnered special attention in the press.
  
  Given the New York press' timely and not infrequent reportage from Ellis Island, there must have been well-established lines of communication between Ellis Island officials and newspaper reporters. Or beat reporters were literally stationed at the island, waiting for: an angle on an unusual detention/deportation story to mine; or to shock readers with tales of immigrant hoards stricken with dangerous contagions; or of public charges poised to drain the resources of the state; or of menacing undesirables posing a grave threat to society—all of which required the Golden Door to be guarded so as to preserve law and order, and most importantly, to prevent racial degeneration. Sometimes all of these elements could be combined in one piece, with one ethnic group.
  
  As a rule, Roma migrants didn't hide their characteristic style of dress and often traveled in large groups composed of immediate and extended family members, invariably attracting near instant attention from the press. Truthfulness and objectivity in their reporting was another matter.

  Look at the picture

  The NY Times article speaks of the impending deportation of "Twenty Servian Gypsies" and gives the date of their arrival on the S.S. Tennyson as 23 July 1904. After cross-referencing all of the source material, including records certified by the Tennyson ship's master and immigrant inspectors at Ellis Island along with other documents discussed below, I concluded that the families were one and the same. There are 13 people depicted in Sherman's photo from what appears to be four separate families. Husbands stand behind wives with some of their children sitting, most of them looking away. Another photo isolates one part of the extended family, reversing the roles and shows the husband seated and mother with daughter standing. These were posed photos with a colorfully-dressed and exotic ethnic group who needed no props nor symbolic backgrounds for it to captivate the viewer, unlike a number of other photos by Sherman. In general, the subjects appear quite at ease; some smile while others look at the camera intently but not with much concern. Whether they were "proper" immigrants or not, they were the show.
  
  The Tennyson's ship's manifest for this date records the arrival of 20 members of the extended Estevanovich family: four adult males, four adult females and 12 children, seven of which were two and under. All were listed as 'Servians' originally sailing from Buenos Aires with six stops at ports in Uruguay, Brazil and Barbados. Four of the adults were literate and all were judged to be in good health and not to require further physical examination. The men were all listed as laborers and their last place of residence was given as Buenos Aires. Together they carried with them an enormous sum of cash: $595 = almost $17,000 in 2018 dollars.
  
  Subsequent documents reveled that some or all of the family was from Šabac, Serbia, while five of the youngest children were born in Argentina. After living in Argentina for several years, it appears that the family name was latinized from the Serbian Ištvanović to Estevanovich or Stevanovich.
  The steamship company clerk that processed the group before embarkation at the port of origin added most of the details in dark ink, while the immigration officer at Ellis Island added additional observations and amendments in the various fields using a lighter pen. The acronym "SI" was appended to the left of their names, indicating that the emigrants were to be held before a Board of Special Inquiry to assess whether they should be allowed to enter the U.S. as immigrants. All family members were marked as such.
  
  According to the manifest, the final destination for the entire Estevanovich family was St. Louis, Missouri, where two unnamed brothers were staying or working at the Jacob Weiss Saloon, an establishment owned by an Austro-Hungarian immigrant. Their stated final destination also happened to be host to the great event of the year: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, i.e. the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, which had begun just a few months before the family's arrival. Based on the manifest, it's impossible to say what the group planned to do once they arrived in St. Louis, but the Fair just might have had something to do with their emigration.[ii]
  
  One of the women was pregnant and two of the children were less than two months old, further complicating what was already a precarious journey. They had spent three to four weeks traveling by steamship [in steerage] up the coast of South America, through the Caribbean until reaching New York, but their journey wasn't yet halfway over in terms of distance and just beginning in terms of duration.

  Discrimination, Detention, Deportation

  Corresponding with the NY Times article, an entry on the Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry sheet notes that all 20 members of the Estevanovich family were ultimately deported back to Argentina, again on the Tennyson and at the expense of the steamship company.
  But not as immediately as the Times article implied and this delay is what possibly led to the right circumstance for the photographs to coalesce. The Estevanovichs didn't leave Ellis Island until 4 October 1904, over 2.5 months from the day they landed, giving Sherman plenty of opportunity to photograph the group. Sherman happened to be well-placed within Ellis Island to monitor detainees; during the early 1900s, he clerked at Special Inquiry hearings and appeals against deportation orders; eventually, he went on to supervise all appeals support staff. Such a position gave him a bird's eye view not of the flood of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island but rather a specific class of immigrants: those in detention.
  
  The Estevanovich family was detained on the grounds that if allowed to enter the U.S., they would become a "Likely Public Charge" (LPC). LPC was a frequently employed but in this case entirely disingenuous claim considering that the family was flush with money, were joining immediate family, and were in good health.[iii] Regardless, the Estevanovichs were unable to overcome the LPC charge.
  
  The final dismissals came over a week after the NY Times article claimed the decision had already been made. The appeals took longer to accommodate, in part because the family was waiting for two witnesses (a brother and a son/nephew of three of the Estevanovich men) to arrive and submit sworn affidavits on the group's behalf. In any case, denial meant deportation and even after four hearings before the Board of Special Inquiry on 24 July (all families), one rehearing on 31 July (Andrija/Andreas) and four appeals delivered on 19 August (all families), nothing changed.
  
  Why? Although there was no state provision, laws or federal statute that specifically singled out Roma for exclusion at ports of entry, the real reasons for their detention and ultimate deportation clearly had more to do with race-based discrimination rather than any regulatory provision put in place to limit the influx of public charges into the United States. As the Times article bluntly noted: "...they were not desirable immigrants." Other statements from Ellis Island officials made during the hearings would echo the language in the Times.
  
  We know this because transcripts of the Special Inquiry hearings and related documents for the Estevanovich family have been preserved by NARA—only because the initial negative outcomes had been appealed—offering a fascinating glimpse into the forgone conclusions of the board. In each case, after a half dozen or so perfunctory questions by two inspectors and the chair of the inquiry, a similar motion ordering deportation was abruptly made for each family. Below is an excerpt from Jeverem's transcript, which is virtually identical to the other three:

  Mr. Paul: How did you support yourself before you came to this country?
  Jeverem Estevanovich: We have been farm hands
  Mr. Paul: Did you ever attempt to enter this country before and were refused admission and deported at the that time?
  Jeverem Estevanovich: I have never been in this country before.
  Mr. Paul: I move the exclusion of the alien immigrants before the Board as likely to become a public charge. This alien is encumbered with his wife, who is pregnant and two very young children; he has an inadequate sum of money to preclude the possibility of their becoming public charges until such time as they would become self-supporting if at all. This class of immigrants are as a rule wandering, professional beggars, fortune tellers, and on the whole very undesirable for admission to this country. [iv]

  The motion was seconded, then the chair declared that the aliens are unanimously excluded as likely to become public charges and ordered deported at the expense of the steamship company which brought them to the U.S. The line of questioning ended with the motion's acceptance. Hearings for each family head took place on 24 July, just a day after the group's arrival at Ellis Island. With each testimony, a copy of a letter from the Consulado de la Republica Argentine en St. Louis, MO, dated six weeks before the family's arrival, was entered into the record. The letter was sent to Commissioner Williams, prior to the group's arrival on the Tennyson. In a perfectly unequivocal manner, it stated that the entire family was expected by family members in St. Louis—who were ready to accommodate them—and that the group should come to the consulate for any assistance in locating their relatives. Though the letter appears to have not been discussed to any substantial degree, it nonetheless shows a high level of preparation on the part of the group. How many other emigrants could have produced such a document?

  Did your wife ever tell fortunes?

  On 31 July, a rehearing was held for the case of Andreas Estevanovich and family, apparently at the request of Commissioner Williams. Andreas was ostensibly the head of the entire group, and he was being accused by a "man from the Deporting Division" of having attempted to enter the country in November 1903, only to have been denied entry and deported; Andreas denied the claim made by the inspector in this and subsequent statements. Though the proceedings, we learn that two of his sons and a daughter were already in the U.S. and that one of them, 25-year old Stefan Stevanovich, had traveled from St. Louis to Ellis Island in order to serve as a witness for his father (Andreas) during the rehearing.

  Chairman Coe: On what ship did you come to this port sometime last fall?
  Andreas Estevanovich: I don't know, I could not tell.
  Chairman Coe: What month was it you were sent back?
  Andreas Estevanvich: I could not tell you; I do not recollect it.
  Chairman Coe: Was it in October or November?
  Andreas Estevanvich: (no answer)
  Chairman Coe: What was the name under which you came her last fall?
  Andreas Estevanvich: Only one name I have.
  
  [Stefan Stevanovich is sworn in]
  [...]
  Mr. Hise: Have you any money saved?
  Stefan Stevanovich: Yes, sir
  Mr. Hise: How much?
  Stefan Stevanovich: $500
  Mr. Hise: Where is that money?
  Stefan Stevanovich: With me
  Mr. Hise: Show it?
  Stefan Stevanovich: (Shows $500 in gold)
  [...]
  Mr. Jackson: What have you been doing in St. Louis?
  Stefan Stevanovich: Working at any kind of work, underground, in factories, and any kind of work. I will pay for him if I have to pay $500, he is my father.
  [...]
  Mr. Jackson: These aliens came to this country on the S.S. Tennyson, November 20, 1903; were made S.I., and were excluded by a Board of Special Inquiry on November 23, 1903 as persons liable to become public charges. At that hearing the opinion of the Board was unanimous, and, aside from that, special stress was laid upon the fact that "if there is such a thing as an undesirable class of immigrants that come to this country, the immigrants before the Board are certainly within that class." [...] I also believe that they do belong to a peculiarly undesirable class. [...] My opinion is that he [Andreas Estevanovich] is a gypsy or has maintained himself after the fashion of a gypsy. I move to exclude them as likely to become a public charge.
  Mr. Hise: There being no evidence submitted before the Board that these people are other than what they profess to be, viz, farmers; also the fact that the man, to my mind, is capable of supporting his family; he shows £41, which he says he has obtained by his own exertions; he has three children in this country, one of whom appears here and exhibits $500, in gold, of his earnings; he appears to be a hard working man. Believing there is no likelihood of these people becoming public charges, I, therefore, move to admit them.
  Chairman Coe: They are excluded.
  (FORMER DECISION SUSTAINED) [v]

  The one dissenting voice throughout all of the hearings came from Mr. Hise and his opinion was referenced in subsequent documents filed on behalf of the family, to no avail.
  
  Despite the outcome, Stefan remained in New York and together with another relative of Andreas who had just come forward, a younger brother named Thomas Michael, they retained the services of an attorney from a Manhattan law firm to represent the entire Estevanovich family in an attempt to reverse the decision of the Board.
  
  The head of each Estevanovich family wished to formally appeal the Board of Inquiry's initial decision and rehearing, but new evidence would be needed. Stefan and Thomas made sworn affidavits in support of an appeal to be made before another convening of the Board of Special Inquiry. Thomas' affidavit stated that he had been in the U.S. since the mid 1880s, that he and his brothers were all born in "Shabats, Servia" (i.e. Šabac, Serbia) but was now a naturalized U.S. citizen who at no point during his stay in the U.S. had became a public charge, that he was a successful small business owner as a copper smith in New York (he had $5000 in savings), and was willing to support the Estevanovich family financially should the need arise. Additional evidence was entered, including a copies of telegrams, submitted by Stefan, from the Argentine Consulate in St. Louis dating from January and June 1904 that indicated Andreas had not attempted to enter the U.S. in November of the previous year. Within a week, the sworn affidavits and evidence were sent to both Commissioner Williams at Ellis Island, as well as to the U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration in Washington D.C., Frank Pierce Sargent.
  
  On the same day that attorneys for the Estevanovich family submitted their first affidavit, it appears that Ellis Island officials unsuccessfully attempted to deport the entire group on the same ship they came in on, i.e. the S.S. Tennyson. According to letter by agents of the ship to Commissioner Williams, the Tennyson could not accommodate such a large group at the last minute, so they were sent back to detention. Within a few days, the affidavits were submitted and received. The four briefs filed on behalf of the appellants concisely address the unfounded statements made by Board officials and offer sound arguments against their unfairness. Moreover, the prejudice of Board officials was called out by attorneys for the family in a manner unusually forthright for the time:

  There is nothing in the law prohibiting gipsies, whatever that term signifies, from entering this country.  The law does require the exclusion of 'professional beggars'; but these immigrants are neither gipsies nor beggars.  There is not the slightest evidence in the case to support the statements of the inspector...
  
  The law of the land does not permit even aliens to be excluded because they belong to an 'undesirable class of immigrants.' [...] There is nothing in the statue that gives the Board of Inquiry the power arbitrarily to determine who is and who is not desirable for admission to this country.  Their duty is to administer and obey the law. [vi]

  The attorneys were correct, but in the end their arguments mattered little.  In this case, the Board had deferred judgement on the next steps to the Department of Commerce and Labor in Washington D.C., where officials reviewed the material and quickly set out a course of action, recommending deportation on two flimsy provisions that state:

  'If he elects to appeal from said order of deportation, he must...file notice of such appeal promptly'
  (Rule 9 of Department Regulations)
  
  'No appeal will be considered after any such alien has in consequence of an adverse decision of a Board of Special Inquiry, been transferred from an immigrant station to be deported' (Rule 8 of Department Regulations)
  
  The Department must, therefore, decline to entertain the appeal, leaving the decision of the Board of Special Inquiry as the final adjudication as to the right of the appellants to land in the United States. [vii]

  And so because the group did not act promptly with their appeal (a dubious claim nowhere mentioned before) and because the physical act of having the group being transferred out of detention and taken to the pier for deportation violated Rule 8—despite the fact that the group was not accepted on board the Tennyson—is what ultimately nullified their final appeal. None of the letters between Ellis Island and Washington officials acknowledge the new affidavits or evidence. The case ended abruptly on the technicalities referenced above, most specifically Rule 8: the letter from the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor to the Commissioner of Ellis Island was dated 18 August; all appeals were dismissed on 19 August.
  
  Despite the quick dismissal, the group remained on Ellis Island for another six weeks, but no additional records concerning their detention are available. All that seems to remain are some notes entered on the August ship's manifest detailing their deportation, including for a newborn.
  
  Maria Estevanovich, age 24, gave birth to her child (technically a U.S. citizen or stateless?) in the hospital at Ellis Island on 19 September.  The unnamed child was barely two weeks old when this extended family of now more than 20 was deported, but that wasn't the end of the Estevanovich's attempts to emigrate to the U.S. Nor for other groups of Roma.

  Roma on the Tennyson and Carpathia

  Incredibly, the same passenger liner that carried the Estevanovich family to Ellis Island in 1904 also transported other extended families of East European Roma from South America to the U.S.  This started even before the Estevanovich's attempted emigration and continued until at least the 1910s, with some of the would-be immigrants also being deported back to their port of embarkation—and again having their detention and deportation reported on in the New York press.[viii]
  
  And from another ship, a story would emerge that overlaps in time and overall narrative with the Estevanovich deportation—at more than ten times the scale. In early September 1904, when the Estevanovich's were still in detention awaiting deportation, a packed steamer sailing from Liverpool arrived at the Ellis Island immigration station. It was the S.S. Carpathia and it carried over 2000 emigrants from all over Europe. More than 200 Roma were among the passengers in steerage, constituting what could very well be the largest single attempted migration of Roma to North America.[ix] According to reporting at the time (which claimed to be citing immigration officials), it would also eventually amount to the largest deportation of a single ethnic group arriving at Ellis Island. By the end of September, about two-thirds would be deported but not before attracting a number of sensationalist news pieces in nationally syndicated press. Who were they? Mostly Russian Roma, many of which had already traveled widely across the Europe and even the Americas. The migration must have taken a great deal of planning and coordination—and might have been hastened by the Britain's increasingly intolerant immigration policies—but the group was described by their self-proclaimed spokesperson/interpreter, José Michel (i.e. 26-year old Joe Mitchell), as "...not Gypsies, but just a band of rovers."[x]
  
  Others, including additional members of the extended Estevanovich family, would attempt to emigrate to the U.S. in 1911. Unlike many groups of Roma who tried the same, this group of 25 met with success in legally entering the U.S. and we can say with certainty that at least some of them went on to become naturalized citizens. Two ship's manifests from 1910 and 1911 which document the emigration of this second group of Estevanovich's, first from Cuba, then via Puerto Rico to Ellis Island, help to reveal a great deal more about their identities and origins.
  
  The July 1910 ship's manifest is incredible document, filled with barely legible but fascinating insights into these well-traveled Roma. The inspection regime of customs officials is also exposed, with telling nuances about immigration procedures into U.S. controlled Insular areas.
  Here we see one family of 25, most born in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, but with some born in France, Brazil and two different cities in a newly independent Cuba.  At least two separate immigration inspectors added details in Spanish and English.  Costa Estevanovich was apparently the head of the family and he carried with him the savings of the entire group: $4000, which is a staggering $105,000 in 2018 dollars.
  
  According to notes in the manifest, the group had no permanent residence and had been away from Europe for 13 years. Their final destination was given as Chicago Illinois, but Costa “[couldn't] give [an] address, except [that] it is known as “Gypsy Place”. The occupation of the adults in the group was recorded as 'artista' in Spanish and 'actor' in English and the inspector blithely noted that they carried with them "Certificates for Chicago via New York...except for 2 dead ones."

  The group made their way from Ponce, Puerto Rico to New York in January 1911. Two more children were born to the family by the time of this second voyage.
  
  Despite the long history of Roma being turned away at immigration stations and border points throughout the U.S., this part of the Estevanovich family appears to have passed through the inspection regime at Ellis Island without incident. No detention, no special inquiry hearing, no scandalous reporting in newspapers—no deportation. Some, perhaps even all, went on to becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. While it remains unclear just how this family is related to the 1904 Estevanovich arrival, it does point to the fact that both as individuals and as a group, Romani peoples tenaciously found ways to the U.S. during the early 20th century.[xi]

  Geljan dade

  Geljan dade tu dureste, Amen ačhađan, Te barjova, bizo tute tu te na džana Tari Amerika, To amal avilo Me pučhav le, dade, Dal' khere tu ka ave [...] Ti slika dikhava, Tuke me rovava

  You went, oh father, far away You left us, To grow up without you Without knowing you From America, Your friend came I asked him, oh father, Whether you'll come home [...] I look at your picture And cry to you [xii]

  Sherman's two images of the extended Estevanovich family date from 1904, making them perhaps his earliest portraits of Ellis Island arrivals. Shortly after he took the photos, Sherman would be regularly photographing aliens awaiting deportation, perhaps as part of his official duties at Ellis Island.  It wouldn't be long before his images would travel beyond the island.
  
  By 1905, Sherman's portraits were turning up in a variety of print publications, including newspapers, government documents, books and several periodicals. Published in 1906, Edward Steiner's convoluted but essentially pro-immigration On the trail of the immigrant, featured Sherman's Servian Gipsies group portrait with the dubious caption: "WITHOUT THE PALE — Not always is the adverse decision of the Commissioner so easy as in the case of some Servian gypsies who, deported from New York, found their way to Canada and quickly made police records." While other captions also highlight the group's deportation, this is the only one I've discovered that makes a claim about what happened to them after leaving Ellis Island.[xiii]
  
  Besides the contemporaneous pickup of Sherman's photos, both Estevanovich portraits above have been reworked by contemporary artists such as Catherine Bancroft and Ai Weiwei, who were drawn to their old world/new world ambiguity during the latest, ugly iteration of the US's long-running debate around immigration. It's not clear whether they or any of the many other artists who have refashioned Sherman's portraits realized that his work didn't always capture actual immigrants. But in a sense, this makes their work even more powerful—particularly if the often complicated and heartbreaking backstories can be brought to light.
  
  By untangling the family's suspended time at Ellis Island, the Estevanovich narrative reveals more about unwritten U.S. policies of discrimination and exclusion rather than immigration, settlement and citizenship—but the concepts have been persistently connected over the centuries of immigration to the U.S. While we only have a fragment of this particular group's long journey, having it illuminates the complex and frustrating path many immigrants had to navigate—especially ones extra-judiciously deemed undesirable—and upends the way one should read Sherman's portraits, no matter the form they're presented in.
  
  It's been over 100 years since Sherman stood behind his large, cumbersome box camera and captured this determined group of would-be immigrants on the roof garden of Ellis Island. It's hard to imagine that either he or his subjects could know that at the beginning of the 20th century the images produced would outlive their own lives, but not the policies and prejudice that brought them together in the first place.
  
  A few years after the deportation of the Estevanovich family, some traces emerge of two of Andreas' sons in an unexpected place: Butte, Montana.
  
  Stefan, who appeared at Andreas' rehearing, and his brother Milan were part of a large group of 'Servian Gypsies' living just outside of Butte that were arrested for vagrancy and ordered to leave the city. In a typically dubious news article, other claims of theft, begging and stealing wood were also made. The story is fragmentary and it remains unclear what became of the group after their time in Montana.  However, national news reporting from rural America to Ellis Island kept consistent pace with with American Gypsies' shifting geography—invariably leveling accusations of public nuisance, theft, larceny, kidnapping and violence.  It would be decades before their portrayal in the press would approach even a negligible degree of fairness.
  
  From the 1920s on, the Estevanovich family name can be found in U.S. Census returns and vital records, particularly around Alameda County, California.[xiv]

  ---

  Notes

  [i] Sherman's Servian Gipsies first appeared in a New York Times article from 12 February 1905 titled "Four Years of Progress at Ellis Island",  but the photo quickly turned up in a variety of other publications, including:
  • "Is there an immigrant peril? The popular impression that the scum of Europe invades the United States vigorously combated by qualified experts", The National civic federation review. v.2 no. 3 (June 1905)
  • "Exclusion or suspension of immigration necessary", The Railroad Trainman v.22:2 (Sept 1905)
  • "Good and bad immigrants at our gates", The Christian Herald (1 Nov 1905).
  • Grosvenor, G. Hovey., National Geographic Society (U.S.). (1907). Scenes from every land: a collection of 250 illustrations from the National geographic magazine, picturing the people, natural phenomena, and animal life in all parts of the world. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.
  • Caffin, Dorothy, "The Stranger within our gates", The Public health nurse. v.11 no.9 (September 1919). Includes an alternate photo of the group.
  Some of Sherman's earliest work was transformed into hand-colored lantern slides, including his Servian Gypsies group portrait, and then acquired by the American Museum of Natural History.  These slides bear Sherman's handwriting and their provenance indicates that his work may have subsequently been used in public lectures at the museum or that they were loaned out to New York schools as early as 1905.
  
  [ii] I subsequently found there were a number of circus performers and animal trainers among other attempted migrations of East European Roma to the U.S. via South America; this included other parts of the Estevanovich family. With massive exhibits such as Hagenbeck's Zoological Paradise and Animal Circus, the 1904 World's Fair would have put their skills in demand. However, transcripts from the Estevanovich hearings indicate that all the adult males intended on performing manual farm labor once they got to St. Louis, as they had done in Argentina. A number of newspaper articles also indicate that the Fair was attracting Gypsies from all over.  See: ROSS, Albert, Gypsies Around St. Louis. Reaping a Harvest. The World’s Fair Has Drawn Many Bands, in The Sun, Chanute, Kansas, 31 October 1904, p. 4.
  
  [iii] From the late 1890s to the mid 1910s, LPC designations accounted for over two-thirds of all exclusions. See: PARK, L. (2011). Criminalizing Immigrant Mothers: Public Charge, Health Care, and Welfare Reform. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 37(1), 29.
  
  [iv] FILE 46,584, Estevanovich; 4-Families-appeal; Records of the INS Records of the Central Office, letters received (early immigration records) 1882-1906; Special Inquiry held at Ellis Island, N.Y., on July 24, 19104, "Case of Jeverem ESTEVANOVICH", Record Group 85; National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
  
  [v] ibid. "Re-hearing in excluded case of ESTEVANOVICH, Andreas, 31 July 1904"
  
  [vi] ibid. "Brief for Appellants (Nicholas and Andreas Estevanovich)", submitted by Wing, Putnam & Burlingham, attorneys for appellants, to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 6 August 1904. The presumption by inspectors of the groups' ethnicity as 'gypsy' is implicit in questions like "Did your wife ever tell fortunes?" but nowhere in the hearings does an official ask the question "Are you a gypsy?".  The Estevanovich attorneys actually deny that the family were gypsy and elsewhere say that "These Servians, instead of being an undesirable class, are a set of thrifty men."
  
  [vii] ibid. "Departmental Letter No. 45,584", Department of Commerce and Labor, 18 August 1904
  
  [viii] A number of other "Servian gipsies" sailed from Buenos Aires to New York during the same time period, including: a group of 20 in August 1902, also from Šabac like the Estevanovich's; a group of 39 in November 1903—the group from which Ellis Island officials would accuse Andreas as having been a part of; a group of 15 in June 1904 that indicated the same final destination as the Estevanovich family, i.e. St. Louis, Missouri. Some members of the 1903 group—who had sailed on the Tennyson—were ultimately deported, while the 1902 and 1904 groups all apparently entered without incident. Others came directly from Europe and met with mixed success, such as a group of 50 who tried to enter in August 1901 but were all deported. Years later, in July 1909, a group of 25 Bulgarian Roma [Tanazoff and Petrovich families], who had left Buenos Aires on the Tennyson for New York but were originally from Thesolonika, were denied entry at Ellis Island.  After five days of detention, the entire group was deported back to Argentina. All 25 were classified as LPC and deemed undesirable [i.e. "professional beggars"] by Ellis Island officials, even though they were healthy and carried over $1000 in gold. According to several newspaper reports, including a lengthy one in the New York Tribune, the group resisted deportation and violently clashed with officials. The reporting was more incredulous than anything, but the deportation was real and echos the Estevanovich story, which took place exactly five years earlier.
  
  [ix] Details on most of the group's arrival and deportation can be seen in the Carpathia's manifest of alien passengers [image 176, 190-201, 205] and record of aliens held for special inquiry [image 338-341]. It appears they first assembled in London before departing from Liverpool for the U.S. Among them were Russian, Austrian, Hungarian, Serbian, and Greek nationals and the last residence for most was given as Libau, Russia (i.e. Liepāja, Latvia). According to news reports, much of their detention was spent on board the Carpathia, due to an outbreak of measles which had stricken over 40 of the passengers. The children in particular were hardest hit and required medical treatment onshore at a hospital in Brooklyn. Five died during detention and even more on the ships that deported them back to the U.K.
  
  [x] See "Gypsies Detained at Island" New York Times. Sep 3, 1904, pg. 14.
  
  [xi] Other NARA documents in the Estevanovich family case file indicate a much wider network of Serbian gypsies existed in Argentina during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  There were more Estevanovich's from Šabac and surrounding areas (i.e. Mačvanski Prnjavor) and more Roma from the same broader area in Serbia that attempted to emigrate to the U.S., again on the S.S. Tennyson. The name persists to this day among Roma communities in Argentina as well as in Brazil, where Estevanovich relatives/decedents have led the Circo Le Cirque (Família Stevanovich) for over one hundred years.
  
  [xii] From Geljan dade, a folk song as sung by Šaban Bajramović (1936-2008). Bajramović was a Serbian Gypsy vocalist and recording artist with a remarkable career spanning more than five decades. Geljan dade and its Serbian language counterpart Prokleta je Amerika, offer two different takes on early 20th century migration to the U.S. The same stanzas in the Serbian language version read: "Prokleta je Amerika, I zlato što sja. Šta mi vredi tvoja slika. Kada oca nemam ja...Ja te znam sa slika. Nemam uspomena." [Damn America, And the gold that glitters. What's your photo worth to me? When I do not have a father...I know you from photographs, I have no memories.] Translation from Romani to English by Ismail Filip Hromčík.
  
  [xiii] Three weeks after the Estevanovich deportation, a few articles appearing in the Montreal Gazette [26-28 October 1904] and subsequently reported on in the U.S. press, are a likely source for Steiner's caption. They reference the initial U.S. deportation—despite the fact that these "gypsies" were naturalized U.S. citizens—the detention on the steamer Ionian, and that the prosecutor in the case "was in a position to show these immigrants belonged to a low and immoral rank of society. Their expulsion from Canada was a matter which concerned the welfare of the public...they should be subjected to a vigorous medical examination before admittance was granted." I've tracked down the ship's manifest of the Ionian and the group referred to in the article is not the Estevanovich family, but rather two families assumed to be from the large group of Roma that tried to enter the U.S on the S.S. Carpathia in September 1904. After careful review of the U.S. deportation records, incoming and outgoing U.K. passenger lists, it's evident that the two Roma families on the Ionian were not on the Carpathia, a reminder of the typically careless reporting of the day.  In any case, considering their long detention on Ellis Island, it's unlikely that the Estevanovich family would have traveled back to Argentina, then boarded steamer for Canada. Before entering Port de Québec, their steamer would have made a stop at Ellis Island, where they would faced the same inspection regime as before. It should also be noted that in his book Steiner refers to gypsies as "really a sort of parasite."
  
  [xiv] See for example, an entry for the Estevanovich family living in Washington, Alameda county on a 1930 Census return. The census enumerator defined the area on Marsh Rd. that this family and over 75 others lived in as a "Gypsy Camp". Though the census records indicates otherwise, I've discovered that older members of the family were actually born in Argentina.
• 1 media/group-of-italians-1905-hine.jpg media/background-2.jpg media/group-of-italians-1905-hine.jpg 2017-03-10T14:26:28-08:00 Immigrants’ photographic legacy 2 image_header 400017 2020-01-04T12:13:22-08:00 Examinations of contemporary immigration issues often reference the past, particularly from the age of mass migration (1850 - 1920), while intermittently dominating today's news cycles. In order to help visualize this turbulent era so that linkages to contemporary trends can be clearly drawn, much of the same photographic material that previous generations of journalists, historians, museum curators, and artists had at their disposal is often utilized.  While such recycled or remixed works may be deployed in good faith, do we know all there is about the original works, including their subjects?  Why were the photos taken? How have they been used?  How did they become the photographic voice of a historical moment?
  
  Treated superficially by most mass media outlets until the Trump era, the subject of early 20th century immigration to the U.S. has already attracted considerable scholarly attention for decades. Works devoted to the patterns, causes, effects, influences and repercussions of immigration to the U.S. fill the shelves of every self-respecting research library. Many studies capture literally (through legislative history, statistics, interviews, etc.) stories of the early 20th century immigrant experience and the best of them offer trenchant analysis from variety of perspectives and modes. Taken as a whole, such writings continue to right historical wrongs by untangling racist fears and deconstructing popular prejudices; their authors are to be applauded for expanding our historical understanding of this crucial time period, which has resulted in much more nuanced and accurate narratives.
  
  Some extensive, recently produced online resources are also providing a basis for bridging gaps (historical, legislative) and drawing much needed attention to recurring patterns in arguments for and against immigration.[i]
  
  However, there is comparatively little non-textual material (e.g. photographs) in circulation that unequivocally capture early 20th century arrivals at immigration stations like Ellis Island or Angel Island who went on to become U.S. citizens.[ii]  Even less visual material is paired with real-life stories; without having both in one breath the viewer is often stuck with incomplete or even false narratives.  
  
  While a great number of photos of immigrants were taken at Ellis Island during the early 20th century, much of that work remains scattered across period newspapers, magazines, journals, books and reports—and is often laden with the harsh anti-immigrant sentiments and eugenic rhetoric so prevalent at the time.
  
  Though less widely explored, there is a long history of documentary photography associated with San Francisco's Angel Island Immigration Station. After the passage of the Geary Act in 1892 and subsequent 1893 amendment, a number of onerous requirements were placed exclusively upon alien, native born, and naturalized Chinese American residents—groups who had already long suffered deep discrimination in daily life and been subject to appalling depictions in the press.  After the passage of the act, now they alone (Chinese Americans) would be required to possess certificates of residence and certificates of identity, at all times.  Such identity documents were to include photos, marking the first time the U.S. government required photos of citizens and/or residents in identity documents.[iii] Many of the original applications and related documents survive and include some stunning portraits of turn-of-the-century Chinese Americans.
  
  However, some of the work of a few photographers in particular is anything but hidden away in the digital or physical world, though their origins and past applications have often at best been ambiguous. Regardless, 100 years and counting many of the images seem irrepressible and continue to turn up in unlikely forms and places.
  
  Public murals, lithographs, sculptures, works on canvas, huge vinyl banners, collages, hand-colored prints, and digitally-colorized portraits are some of the recent mediums artists have used to re-imagine old photographs. But in many instances so little is known about the source material, let alone the subjects themselves, that artists and re-mixers appear to have assumed they're working with a with de facto immigrants that can be taken at face value. This has led to some unintended and often deeply troubling ironies.
  
  But in some cases, a critical re-reading of a photograph, combining contextual elements previously ignored, can fundamentally change the way the work should be interpreted.

  The Steerage

  Perhaps the most iconic "immigrant photo" ever made, and one of the most famous images of the 20th century, Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage  was shot in 1907 with a Graflex, a simple single-lens reflex camera, while Stieglitz and his family were traveling aboard the 700-foot S.S. Kaiser Wilhelm II. Until recently The Steerage had been used countless times in print and media as representative of the beginning of the classic immigrant journey to America. But when Stieglitz captured his iconic moment, the Kaiser Wilhelm II was actually steaming away from New York and heading towards Plymouth, England...or even already anchored at Plymouth.  So the passengers (the people captured in the photo) were not emigrating to the to the U.S. but rather were a mix of return migrants, birds of passage, deportees, sojourners or naturalized citizens returning to their homeland for a visit.
  
  Two woman on board wearing or holding striped shawls—thought by many to be tallits—were for decades assumed to be Jewish, but upon closer inspection the tallits turned out to be striped blankets probably issued onboard the steamship, thereby erasing the one marker that gave them ethnic identity. Also, Stieglitz and his family were situated in luxurious first-class quarters of the mammoth North German Lloyd steamer, far removed from the below deck squalor, and by his own admission only ventured out of his comfortable surroundings by chance. Bored with the stuffy company in first-class, he decided to see how the other half were living below; that's the accident that prompted the photo. What resulted was a first-class view of the third-class masses.
  
  Make no mistake, The Steerage is modernist masterpiece of photography and Stieglitz himself regarded it as his most representative work, but some of the facts behind the photo, often absent, are crucial to a better reading of the work.
  
  With Ellis Island, however, two photographers in particular are primarily responsible for visually setting/framing contemporary perceptions of early 20th century immigrant arrivals: Augustus Sherman and Lewis Hine. Many of their several hundred surviving photos are accessible in digital collections on the web as well as in print.[iv] In fact, there is a certain ubiquity and multipurpose nature to their work—especially today—but if taken at face value, like Stieglitz's The Steerage, such images can mislead rather than accurately inform and educate.
  
  Though his intentions might have been benign, Sherman's work in particular invokes the specter of eugenics while simultaneously disinforming the historical record.

  Augustus Francis Sherman (1862-1925)

  Augustus Francis Sherman, a lifelong employee with the Immigration Bureau of Ellis Island, held a number of positions throughout his career that put him in close contact with immigrant arrivals at the busiest immigration station in the world. Most of this time was spent as a clerk of various ranks, but whatever official duties he had in this capacity has left few traces in government archives or elsewhere.  However, sometime between 1904 and the early 1920s, Sherman made a series of stunning photographic portraits of immigrants, many of whom were being held by U.S. customs officials for special investigation.
  
  According to all written accounts or retrospective studies I've encountered, photographing immigrants was not part of Sherman's official duties at Ellis Island but rather more of a hobby.[v] Regardless, his work ended up having a remarkably long afterlife: over one hundred years and counting, Sherman's photos have gone on to become some of the most reproduced early 20th century U.S. “immigrant photos” on record, appearing in books, newspapers, magazines, congressional hearings, exhibits and more recently via web-based news and archival platforms.[vi] The United States' uneasy and predictably unoriginal struggles with who is and who should become a U.S. citizen have ensured that each "new" debate on immigration brings out the same restrictionist arguments and oftentimes the same old photos by Sherman and some of his contemporaries.
  
  Perhaps this is understandable. The 200 or so photos that have survived are indeed striking, mostly well-composed portraits that capture an old world/new world convergence, along with some degree of America’s expanding ethnic diversity. They were, however, staged rather than candid portraits and often reflect an overtly racial thinking about “types” prevalent at the time; there is good evidence to suggest that this mindset provided the context for Sherman’s extracurricular activities. Because reproductions of his photos often lack adequate or proper context, viewers can easily be led to believe that the subjects were typical immigrants to the United States—they were not. Many if not all of the subjects captured in Sherman’s portraits were individuals that had been detained upon entry at Ellis Island for legal or “medical” reasons and some would have been denied entry and/or deported.
  
  Unfortunately, Sherman did not record the names of most of his photographic subjects, making research into the context of their emigration and ultimate fate near impossible to determine, but it’s reasonable to assume that individuals with congenital deformities or conditions (e.g. microcephaly, dwarfism), or individuals from exotic lands where a zero-immigration policy was in place (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa, China, etc.) did not go on to become U.S. citizens. In fact, some were in reality performers contracted to tour with U.S. circuses. In later chapter, I explore the the journeys and lives of a few of Sherman's subjects I've succeeded in identifying.
  
  Remarkable as some may be, Sherman’s photos are not necessarily representative of immigrants who went on to naturalize as U.S. citizens and settle permanently. Though they were presumed to be essentially documentary photography at the time—and even perhaps today—many of the photos are exploitative and/or imbued with a eugenic (visual) rhetoric that highlights race, disability and otherness.[vii] The racism and pseudo-scientific thinking that allowed such ideas and images to be readily consumed had long been resonating in popular culture and academia, and it was writ large at Ellis Island, Angel Island and other immigration stations. In a way, the photos serve(d) as a kind of warning to non-immigrant America (e.g. they're not like us and here they come...) while simultaneously providing a platform for curious onlookers to surveil.
  
  The most extreme examples of Sherman's work (those that display pronounced human disability) are not part of the New York Public Library's digitized collection of his photos, nor included an earlier online collection made by the U.S. National Park Service.[viii]

  Through the sieve...

  During his lifetime, many of Sherman's photos were used in publications that showed the “new immigrants” as a more of a menace and threat to proper Anglo-Saxon America than a benefit; only a few offer marginally sympathetic portrayals in accompanying texts.[ix] Despite the wide-scale use of his photos, Sherman's name was not ascribed to his work until well after his death in 1925.
  
  His earliest photos date from 1904 and appear to have been quickly adapted by different media, from government documents like the Annual report of the Superintendent of Immigration to the Secretary of the Treasury to extensive features in National Geographic, denominational newspapers and publications, and the New York Times. The wide and near-simultaneous deployment of his photos indicates a coordinated, deliberate distribution—perhaps coming from whatever passed for a public relations division of the federally-controlled Ellis Island Immigration Station.
  
  Sherman's work also made its way into the permanent collections of museums and missionaries. Such collections were not made for posterity but rather to serve as photo stock for future applications e.g. educational purposes...with an agenda.

  Extending the hand of fraternal helpfulness

  During the 1910s and 1920s, Sherman and Hine appear to have shared (or sold) negatives of their work with the Methodist Church Board of Missions, complete with log notes, captions or annotations. In 2019, the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church made available a massive photo collection that includes dozens of uncredited works by Sherman and Hine, some of them unique or with unique annotations, offering new insight into both photographer's work.
  
  Why were these photographers mixing with Methodist Missionaries working out of Ellis Island? It seems an unlikely pairing at first, but closer study reveals parallel trajectories: influencing public opinion.
  
  Missionaries were reliable fixtures at both Ellis Island and Angel Island for decades, providing education, advice and care to immigrants—especially ones in detention or perceived to be wayward. Throughout their lives, both Sherman and Hine interacted with different secular and religious-based organizations who were interested in how photography could be used to support or visually legitimize their assistance to arrivals at Ellis Island. The photographic works procured by organizations such as the Methodist Church Board of Missions was in turn stored for future use in lantern slide presentations for fellow missionaries, or for use among their congregations, public lectures, or in denominational newspapers.
  
  Besides simply wanting to help those in need, missionaries at Ellis Island naturally had other motives for their work. "What if warm-hearted messengers of Christ were there to give them [i.e. Christian immigrants] welcome and counsel, and direct and in some way follow them to their new home?", asked a Presbyterian minister in 1904 as he envisioned how the "evangelization of foreigners" might begin at Ellis Island. Based on some telling traces in various books and periodicals from 1905 on, Sherman appears to have been tasked with the onboarding of multi-denominational members of the faith who assisted immigrants at Ellis Island, as well as public school teachers who worked at Ellis Island to "bring the torch of education to foreigners" in detention.[x]
  
  Besides uptake by missionaries with an interest in Ellis Island arrivals, at least one well-known New York museum acquired some of Sherman's work during the photographer's lifetime.  A dozen or more hand-colored lantern slides made from some of Sherman's earliest work, and including titles written in his own hand, are in a collection at the American Museum of Natural History.  The precise reason why they appear in the museum's collection—a collection that was lendable to New York schools—remains unclear, but their inclusion indicates yet another level of the dissemination of Sherman's work.[xi]
  
  Controlling the visuals behind the face of early 20th century immigration to the United States, selectively using them for pedagogical purposes, would, perhaps wittingly, help shape and bolster the increasingly restrictive immigration narrative of the time.

  Undesirables in majority

  There is no shortage of alarmist, racist commentary on the "quality" of immigrants coming to the U.S. during the early 20th century—or any century for that matter.[xii]  This included government officials, e.g. the federal commissioner of immigration for the Port of New York, William Williams, who was in no small measure a restrictionist and nativist.  Sherman worked at Ellis Island during both of his terms as commissioner from 1902-1905 and 1909-1913. During his tenure, Williams kept a running collection of photographs (about 50 of which were made by Sherman), newspaper clippings, sketches, and letters pertaining to immigration that he would assemble in scrapbooks. The scrapbooks and other materials have been kept by the Manuscripts and Archives Division of The New York Public Library and form the basis of most of the digital remixing of Sherman's photographs.
  
  Sherman's photos should be seen in the context of the mediums they were featured, as well as within the larger context of era of mass immigration and mass restriction. Williams frequently shared his thoughts on the matter, and, as commissioner of immigration, naturally had a lot to say.  He was consistently negative when it came to the quality of recent immigration of Southern and Eastern Europe, who made up the majority of arrivals at Ellis Island during the early 20th century:

  Whom would you include among the 'undesirable minority,' as you call the hopeless 20 per cent?" I asked. "Illiterate, poverty stricken persons of low vitality, who, although they are physically able to perform only the cheapest kind of manual labor, will live nowhere but in our largest cities. I claim that they are a drag upon the American wage-earner, that their competition tends to lower the standard of living in this country, and that they are mentally and morally unfit for the right kind of citizenship. Understand," Mr. Williams said, "that the law now gives them all the privileges accorded to the German, the Swede, the Frenchman and the immigrants from Great Britain. They are coming with the remainder, to the profit of no one but the steamship companies. I am powerless to turn them back. Nevertheless, it is my belief that they ought to be turned back—that every immigrant who lands upon our shores should be a national asset and not a social liability. If cheap labor is wanted, then there is no logical objection to the Chinese, who can work hard and who can live on less than almost any race in the world."[xiii]

  Sherman's photos have continued to circulate in various formats over the years—exponentially so in the digital age—though with an altogether different but equally inaccurate subtext: this is how your immigrant ancestors looked before they came to the U.S.[xiv]
  
  Since Sherman's photos have come to light, few scholars have attempted any deep analysis of his photos and most of the partial critiques out there have been either only focused on their value as photographic documentary material, remaining oddly silent on some of the more incongruous and disturbing implications.
  
  Sherman's photographs have been widely consumed for over one hundred years, but has their context been adequately explored?

  Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940)

  Between 1904 and 1909 and in 1926, photographer and social reformer Lewis Wickes Hine captured some 200 remarkable images of immigrants in various states of processing at Ellis Island.[xv] Hine sought to use photography as an educational tool in the service of reform and was a groundbreaking documentary photography. But he took an unusual path, one that had a decisive effect on what fueled his relentless pursuits to, as Hine puts it, "show the things that had to be corrected...the things that had to be appreciated." After a humble start in Wisconsin and years working odd jobs (janitor, deliveryman), he eventually obtained degrees in pedagogy and sociology and became a teacher at the Felix Adler Ethical Cultural School as well as staff photographer for the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.
  
  As far as photography goes, he was largely self-taught and spent years developing unobtrusive techniques to photograph subjects that were largely being ignored (child laborers) or had never been presented sympathetically (immigrants). While Hine's startling images of child labor were well-reproduced during his lifetime, his earlier Ellis Island portraits—or "photo-studies" as he called them—were not widely seen until after his death in 1940. Like Sherman’s portraits, some have gone on to become iconic images for documenting the millions of Europeans who passed through Ellis Island.[xvi]
  
  For a number of reasons, Hine’s portraits better represent typical early 20th century immigrants, many of whom we can assume went on to becoming U.S. citizens. As Klara-Stephanie Szlezák concludes: "Hine’s work was not a depiction of the stereotype of ‘the immigrant’ but rather of the plurality of immigrants, granting each of the subjects’ individuality in a unique scenery and situation, thereby suppressing established notions of the immigrants’ inferiority." [xvii]
  
  Among other things, the first decades of the 20th century were characterized by intense discrimination of "new immigrants" from Italy and Southeastern Europe, who were seen by many as undesirable and often treated with scorn and derision by the dominant Protestant, Anglo-Saxon fueled ruling class.
  
  Inspired by the work of Jacob Riis and Progressive Era reformers, Hine’s photographs succeed in humanizing the "poor huddled masses" and help contextualize—through images alone—a key phase of the immigrant experience at Ellis Island.
  
  And Hine had something in mind that few at the time would dare attempt.  Writing to his former mentor, Frank Manny, who sometimes accompanied Hine on his trips to Ellis Island, Hine wrote in 1938:

  Do you recall our talking about a Pilgrim Celebration and a little Russian said he was thankful that the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. I said I wanted the children of later days to feel equal regard of Castle Island and Ellis Island.[xviii]

  Hines' portraits, while also somewhat staged, do indeed offer a more sympathetic portrait of early 20th century “new” immigration, free from the more overt eugenic undertones of Sherman’s photos and carrying an altogether different subtext: photography as social criticism.
  
  Notwithstanding, Hine’s photos are more than sympathetic portraits of immigrants; they are also products of a complex and uneasy time where numerous aspects of citizenry were institutionally racialized. As Leslie Jennifer Urena has pointed out: "While Hine may have gone to Ellis Island with the intention of creating pedagogical tools designed to draw support for new immigrants, he returned with photographs that also facilitated the denigration of immigrants."[xix]
  
  Hine’s racialized subjects ironically served the dual purpose of appealing to both reformers and restrictionists alike. They do, however, in the main continue the pattern of Sherman’s more or less anonymous, racial typing as well as exclude immigrants from other parts of the world that settled in the U.S. during the early 20th century, e.g. the Middle East. It is worth noting that during his lifetime Hine’s immigrant photos would be used in a number of publications that sought to undermine the “new immigration” that was rapidly striking fear and loathing in variety of intellectual and political circles.

  Julian A. Dimock (1873-1945)

  Besides Hine and Sherman, there are of course other photographers worth investigating who made portraits of immigrant at Ellis Island and elsewhere during the early 20th century.
  
  In 1907, the peak year for immigration at Ellis Island, Julian Dimock made a sympathetic and poignant series of portraits of arrivals, mostly in the station's detention room. Like Sherman and Hine, the photos' subjects remain largely anonymous and can only be minimally parsed with titles such as "Woman and girl in detention room", "Man from Holland (had wife and three children)", "Rumanian woman from Bucharest", or "Jewish man, Yiddish speaker".
  
  While the composition of Dimock's photographs is certainly less ethnographic in tone compared to the work of Sherman, it is for this very reason that allows the photos to reveal something obvious: that typical arrivals at Ellis Island were not exotic specimens, nor anything like the crude caricatures depicted in many newspapers and magazines of the day, but rather more like us (i.e. good citizens) than not.
  
  Dimock's writing on his 1907 photo series mirrors the empathetic quality of his portraits:

  My work with the camera took many days, for I was determined to have the chosen types representative. I tried to select an equal number of good and bad. For one whole day, I devoted myself to photographing nothing but the poorest specimens that I could find, resolutely leaving all the pretty girls and fine looking men out of it. After a week I gave up the attempt, for there were no bad types, or so few as to be negligible.[xx]

  During those two weeks in late 1907, Dimock captured more than 75 portraits. These much better preserved but less widely circulated photographs are imbued with the same sensitivity and compassionate eye that the photographer employed in 1904/05 during his trips to African American communities in the Deep South, just prior to the Great Migration.  Both subjects are thus captured as they or the communities they came from were about to experience momentous change.

  A complete visual narrative?

  Remarkably, Sherman, Hine and Dimock all captured their photographs in a roughly contemporaneous occurrence; all three also spent most of their time with detained immigrants. They easily could have bumped cameras together, although their final products differ substantially. Does their work represent the photographic voice of a historical moment? A complete visual narrative? To some extent, yes, though their limitations have not yet been substantially addressed. Their work certainly reflects the uneasy times in which they were made, but what kind of human narrative actually lies behind the subjects of work? I explore this question in the next chapter with a deeper study of a small portion of their work.
  
  Deconstructing these photographic artifacts and reanimating the lives of the subjects captured may break the spell they've cast, but also has the power to fix the viewer's gaze on reality rather than false narrative. 
  
  Representation matters, especially for materials that are used to construct our visual public record.  It is perhaps more important than ever to develop a visual literacy—one that peers behind both the photographer's lens and the subject's gaze—in order to see how yesterday's restrictionists tangled with progressivism, junk science, and the popular racism of the day to secure the passing of increasingly restrictionist immigration policy, culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924.
  
  More than a hundred years later, unmistakable echos of early 20th century xenophobia and fearmongering against immigrants continue to reverberate.  These echos have deep roots and parsing the sometimes coded, sometimes overtly racist language that obstructs meaningful reform and justice often leads back to the same tired rhetoric from the era of mass immigration and mass restriction. Even more disturbing is the rise of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate violence taking place in plain sight, though often going under-reported or being carried out with smirking impunity.

  ---

  Notes/Works cited

  [i] See for example the University of Minnesota's #ImmigrationSyllabus, an excellent and exhaustive compendium of "essential topics, readings, and multimedia that provide historical context to current debates over immigration reform, integration, and citizenship." Produced in January 2017.
   

  [ii] There are even fewer films.  The U.S. Library of Congress has preserved a couple of silent, grainy works that offer a moving glimpse of arrivals. Each achieves a degree of objectivity, but only at a distance: Emigrants [i.e. immigrants] landing at Ellis Island (1903) and Arrival of immigrants, Ellis Island (1906). 
   

  [iii] Recent works in print include: (1) Sherman, A. F., & Mesenhöller, P. (2005). Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island portraits: 1905-1920. New York: Aperture.  (2) Grzonkowska, A., Wicenty, J., Bokiniec, M., & Muzeum Emigracji (Gdynia). (2017). Augustus Francis Sherman: Atlas imigranta = Augustus Francis Sherman : atlas of the immigrant. Gdynia: Muzeum Emigracji w Gdyni. (3) Fuentes, S. M., García, M. L. M., & Distributed Art Publishers. (2012). Lewis Hine: From the collections of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. (4) Hine, L., & Walther, P. (2018). Lewis W. Hine, America at work. Cologne: Taschen.
   

  [iv] Pegler-Gordon, Anna In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy. (American Crossroads, number 28.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2009, 39.
   

  [v] During his tenure with the Immigration Service at Large, Sherman worked at Ellis Island as Stenographer, Superintendent of Landing, Clerk, Registry Clerk, and Chief Clerk. By 1921, shortly before his retirement, he served as Private secretary to Commissioner of Immigration, Ellis Island.  Existing accounts of Sherman's professional activities don't imply that he took photographs in an official capacity, but in a later chapter I explore the possibility that this might not have been the case.
   

  [vi] See, for instance:

  • Washington Post’s “What America’s Immigrant Ancestors looked like when they arrived on Ellis Island”
  • The Guardian’s “Color portraits of immigrants at Ellis Island – in pictures”
  • Time's "Colorized Photos From Ellis Island Reflect the Timeless Struggles of Immigrants"
  • Steven Kasher Gallery: "Augustus Sherman: Aliens or Americans?" [3 November - 23 December 2016]
  • Howard Greenberg Gallery: "The Immigrants: A Group Exhibition of Works by Select Photographers" [14 December 2017 – 27 January 2018]

  [vii] For early examples, see the 20 photographs by Sherman appearing in the May 1907 of National Geographic and many more in the February 1917 issue; see also the photos in the U.S Public Health Service's 1918 Manual of Mental Examination of Aliens to understand how immigration inspectors that worked with Sherman read their subjects. In addition, the October 1913 issue of The Popular Science Monthly, features a long article by Alfred C. Reed (Assistant Surgeon, U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, New York) on "Immigration and the Public Health", replete with photographs of Ellis Island arrivals that employ the same anonymous racial typing used by Sherman and others. The tone of the text is one of fear and alarm at the potential "bad blood" undesirable immigrants are bringing and indicates that "Ellis Island is peculiarly adapted to be an experimental station [italics added] in the mental and physical examination of immigrants." (p.329).
   

  [viii] Mesenhöller's book reproduces over 100 of Sherman's photos and includes a number of individuals that were not, in fact, immigrants but rather non-immigrant aliens contracted with circuses and sideshows. For example, photos of "Perumall Sammy" and "Subramaino Pillay and two Microcephalics" were recorded as "circus freaks" by immigrant inspectors on the 1911 ship's manifest that documents one of their several arrivals in the U.S.  The two were traveling to work with a circus based in Zanesville, Ohio. Perumall Sammy would later make additional trips to the U.S., working at Samuel W. Gumpertz's Dreamland on Coney Island as well as touring with the Ringling Brothers Circus.
   

  [ix] See Arnold, K. R. (2011). Anti-immigration in the United States: A historical encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood Press, a 900 page, 2-volume compendium to the major categories of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.
   

  [x] For background on Presbyterian missionary efforts to bring Evangelism to Ellis Island arrivals, see Thompson, Charles. "Responsibility of the Church for the Evangelization of Foreigners" The Assembly Herald, v.10, no.5 1904. Available via HathiTrust.  For an example of how public school educators were enticed to work at Ellis Island, which includes one of the few contemporaneous mentions of Sherman by name, see "Teachers on Ellis Island" School, Vol. xxvi, No. 11, Nov 12 1914. Available via HathiTrust.
   

  [xi] Grose, Howard B.  Aliens or Americans? New York : Young People's Missionary Movement, c1906. Available via Internet Archive.
   

  [xii] According to the American Museum of Natural History Research Library's website, the reason for the lantern slide collection is as follows: "To expand the Museum’s educational mission beyond its walls, a lantern slide lending library was created and formed the basis of the Natural Science Study Collections which the Museum delivered to New York schools. The lantern slides, reproduced from the growing collection of photographs created and collected by the Museum staff, were originally used to illustrate lectures given to the public at the Museum. The lectures were so successful that a new and larger theater was constructed in 1900 to accommodate the growing crowds."
   

  [xiii] Morrow, James B. "The Undesirable immigrant defined by an expert. Commissioner William Williams Wants Him Kept Out Entirely" New York Daily Tribune,  October 3, 1909. Available via Chronicling America.
   

  [xiv] Swanson, Ana “What America’s immigrants looked like when they arrived on Ellis Island” The Washington Post, October 24, 2015.
   

  [xv] Many of Hine’s “immigrant photos” are available via The New York Public Library.  They have also made the rounds on web-based news outlets:

  • Washington Post's "This photographer wanted to humanize Ellis Island’s immigrants. His images are still powerful"
  • Guardian's "The photos that changed America: celebrating the work of Lewis Hine"
  • PRI's "2 eras, 1 dream: Photos of immigrants on Ellis Island and today's Syrian refugees"
  • NRC Handlesblad's "Lewis Hine en de immigranten van Ellis Island"

  [xvi] See for example Hine’s “Italian family” The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Italian family looking for lost baggage, Ellis Island" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1904.
   

  [xvii] Szlezák, Klara-Stephanie "The Ellis Island Experience: Through the Eyes of Lewis Hine” Aspeers: emerging voices in American studies (2 2009) 73.
   

  [xviii] Walther, P., & Hine, L. W. (2018). Lewis W. Hine: America at work, 14.
   

  [xix] Urena, Leslie Jennifer Lewis Hine at Ellis Island: The photography of immigration and race, 1904–1926 (Doctoral dissertation) Northwestern University, 2009, 114.
   

  [xx] Dimock, Julian A., "Ellis Island As Seen By The Camera-Man," The World Today, Volume XIV, No. 4, April 1908, 395. Available via HathiTrust.