Issues relating to immigration have been front and center in the news, from the recent travel ban to the border wall to the uncertainty of the Dreamers. Through January 27, 2018, an exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York focuses on the immigrant experience – from hardship and sacrifice to pride and achievement. Entitled The Immigrants, it surveys the work of more than 40 photographers from the 1860s through 2015, exploring issues of labor, education, and poverty as well as discrimination, assimilation, and a sense of belonging. More than 70 images exploring these important topics are on view by Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Edward Burtynsky, Robert Capa, Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Robert Frank, W. Eugene Smith, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alex Webb, among others.
Tracing the immigrant’s journey, photographs in the exhibition lead viewers through sections on otherness, growth, global issues, boundaries, work, and the history of the United States. In addition to iconic images such as Lewis Hine’s Climbing into America, 1905; Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage, 1907; and W. Eugene Smith’s Dream Street, 1955-56, the gallery has on display two historic works by Augustus Frederick Sherman, who documented new arrivals while working as a clerk at the Ellis Island immigration station from 1892 to 1925.
Two rarely seen Dorothea Lange photographs about the incarceration of Japanese Americans by the U.S. during WWII are also on view in the exhibition. Withheld from the public during the war by the government, Lange’s photographs reveal a hidden truth about a dark chapter in our nation’s history.
Ernst Haas’s Last Displaced Person Boat from 1951 also documents that for a limited time, the U.S. authorized permanent residency for 200,000 Europeans displaced by WWII. Immigration in Israel is depicted by Ruth Orkin in a touching 1951 portrait of three Jewish teenage refugees from Iraq, their faces pressed up against an airplane window landing at Lydda Airport in Tel Aviv.
Among the most poignant images in the exhibition are the portraits of immigrants who told their stories to the photographers. Bill Owens’s 1976 portrait of a worker in a factory notes: “I’m a refugee from China. I sew pockets on pants. Every day I have work, and living here is easy. In China it’s hard to find a job. Someone has to recommend you. I don’t speak English and I’m too old to learn so I’ll never get a better job.” A 2005 print by Dulce Pinzón shows a young man dressed in a Superman costume riding a bike. He is Noe Reyes from the state of Puebla who works as a delivery person in Brooklyn and sends $500 home to his family each week.
The Immigrants: A Group Exhibition of Works by Select Photographers
December 14, 2017 – January 27, 2018
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 E 57th St
New York, NY 10022
USA
