"Ellis Island is a symbol of America’s immigrant heritage. From 1892 to 1954, this immigrant depot processed the greatest tide of incoming humanity in the nation’s history. Nearly twelve million landed here in their search of freedom of speech and religion, and for economic opportunity." ~ www.ellisisland.org


These images were shot with the pictures of my father and his family, as well as my mother and her family floating through my mind's eye as I walked through this very historic space on Ellis Island today. I mused over those nagging questions of why we seem unable to embrace each other, respecting all those varied differences while we rejoice in all that brings us together in our similarities...


My father's journey to America was a circuitous one as a Holocaust survivor and although he didn't enter New York via Ellis Island, it was New York Harbor that greeted him, after he made the often-difficult passage to America from Poland to Italy and then through Havana, finally to Miami. My mother's parents left the Bay of Naples during one of the earlier waves of immigration in search of the "new opportunity" in that place called America, in search of a place to call "home."


There will be many more images added in due time, with scanned images of my own family who once upon a time passed through those halls of Ellis Island and New York Harbor.