Her one photo, kohl-eyed, and he's bent close, alive

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[gwynnega]

Wow, what incredible images. My grandmother (also named Ida!) was sent back from Ellis Island the first time she came over as a teenager from Poland - but then she made the trip again (still a teenager) and they let her in...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Winchester Mass?

Incredible.

Those photos are just breathtaking. I do see exactly what you mean by spirit photography....

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, they are stunning. My grandmother as well was an Ida.

Nine

[yukihada.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you shared this. My great-grandparents and their first children came over through Ellis Island from Norway.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

Ellis Island is not as ghostly-beautiful as it in these photos (for which, many thanks) now that it's been tarted up for the tourist trade. But it's still plenty haunted. The exhibit of things that people brought with them from their various Old Countries, donated by their descendents, is especially poignant.

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.

[seajules]

Those really are both haunted and haunting.

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.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Those are incredible photographs. Thank you for sharing the link.

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.