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Her one photo, kohl-eyed, and he's bent close, alive
The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester has a stunning exhibit: photographs taken in the ruins of the hospital buildings on Ellis Island between 1998 and 2003. They are the closest I know to true spirit photography; they glow like old stained glass, some of the most beautiful images I have ever seen and the most haunted. Lead paint has ruined to the bluish violet of winter dusk and flaked down to cover the floor like rain. Ivy bursts in through a half-sashed window, holding the barren frame in place against a flame of late sun. The Statue of Liberty is reflected, small and exact as an icon, in the mirror over a rust-drained sink in the tuberculosis ward. I had not even known the museum existed; I found it through a mention in the Boston Globe. Go, if you can. Look, if you don't believe me. My great-grandmother Ida Friedman came to this country with a man who in some stories is her fiancé, in others her lover; all the way from Vishnevets in the Ukraine, but at Ellis Island he was sent back because of his health. He might be one of the ghosts in these rooms, whose absence is as tangible as a presence. The air is charged with them. I only marvel that they cannot be seen.
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Where in Poland?
Your grandmother had a happier ending. I have always been told that she never saw him again. No one has even been able to tell me his name; maybe no one remembers it. He's an alternate family history.
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Her sisters also settled in Chicago with her, but her brothers (and her mother, too, I think) died in the camps.
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We have places like that in my family history. I'm not sure anyone knows where one of my great-grandfathers came from, beyond the immense generality of Russia—he made that portion of his past disappear so completely that Russian was never spoken in his household, Yiddish only sketchily, and he never brought any of his family over. The one story we have claims that his father was a rabbi who had abandoned his congregation and his family. He was sixteen when he came over, maybe. His last name is unusual verging on unheard-of. You could make yourself reappear like that. And a century later when your descendants want to know who you were? America gonif!
Her sisters also settled in Chicago with her, but her brothers (and her mother, too, I think) died in the camps.
Do you know their names?
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Yes, I know what you mean. I think my mother's father was from Minsk, but that's all I know about the pre-America part of his life.
Do you know their names?
Only their last name, which was Abend. I've seen photos of them, but I can't recall my grandmother or her sisters ever mentioning their lost family members by name.
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Incredible.
Those photos are just breathtaking. I do see exactly what you mean by spirit photography....
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Yes. Close enough for you to come see?
Those photos are just breathtaking.
They are even more so in person. Some have the same dimensions as a full-length portrait; they look like doors and windows themselves, opening inward. Their depth and detail is extraordinary.
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Actually, Winchester's not really any closer or farther away from here than Boston/Cambridge/Burlington--I think of them all as being about the same. *Sigh* if I do get over that way, I'll go take a look. (If the exhibit is still up.)
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It runs through the end of March . . .
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Nine
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Walking into a roomful of them is like a rose window of ghosts.
My grandmother as well was an Ida.
How strange. I wonder who everyone was named after.
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My other grandmother, Clara, came five or six years before there was an Ellis Island. I find that odd, as if she didn't properly arrive.
Nine
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Yes. I thought of the graphic novel: these visions are as otherworldly, except they were here.
My other grandmother, Clara, came five or six years before there was an Ellis Island. I find that odd, as if she didn't properly arrive.
Oh, right. Reframe: she came here before it was trendy.
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Thank you for sharing this in return.
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Before Ellis Island was built, everyone was processed through Castle Clinton, in Battery Park. I saw an open-air production of Schiller's *Mary Stuart* there two summers ago--a remarkable experience.
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The photographer's notes commented on the renovation: his images are now ghosts themselves. Yay, historical irony?
The exhibit of things that people brought with them from their various Old Countries, donated by their descendents, is especially poignant.
I would think so . . .
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I don't know if there are any Ellis Islanders in my history. Everyone I know about came through Boston, except the ones who might have come up the Southern way.
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Through Boston?
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To most, that meant Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. In my family's case, that meant we hit water, pondered it a few decades, and some of us jumped across to Hawai'i. *G* I have a great-uncle and great-aunt who live there, but most of us are in the Oregon/Washington area. Except the branch that went up to Canada and spread. And we keep making forays into Alaska. And California, natch.
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My great-grandmother Ida Friedman came to this country with a man who in some stories is her fiancé, in others her lover; all the way from Vishnevets in the Ukraine, but at Ellis Island he was sent back because of his health.
My father's grandfather's father's first (?) wife died on shipboard between Cóbh and New Orleans. I'm descended from his second wife, who's reported to have later walked out and left him with their children.
I don't think anyone in my family came through Ellis Island. It's a strangely incomplete feeling.
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You're welcome. They made an impression on me.
I don't think anyone in my family came through Ellis Island. It's a strangely incomplete feeling.
It still counts.