The Ellis Island hospital opened in 1902, in a huge building on the southern part of the island, across from the Registry Room, where newcomers were processed. Doctors took only a few seconds to determine if foreigners were healthy enough to enter. Some were sent back, but others were directed to the hospital, which had 750 beds across several buildings and was considered a paragon of public health management. It also had a contagious disease wing and isolation rooms, a “psychopathic” ward, a laboratory and a morgue. Autopsies were sometimes attended by European physicians, according to “Forgotten Ellis Island,” the documentary film and book by Lorie Conway.
“Unframed — Ellis Island” is part of the French artist JR’s larger “Unframed” series that puts archival photos in new contexts in places like Marseille, France; São Paulo, Brazil; and Washington. He was introduced to this project by a book, “Ellis Islands-Ghosts of Freedom,” the photographer Stephen Wilkes’s exploration of the hospital in its wildest state, and quickly became obsessed with the grounds. Finishing the installation this month, he and his small team would arrive in the morning and wander all day, before taking the tourist ferry back to Manhattan.
[ads2]
“It’s a really powerful place,” said Mr. Wilkes, who photographed the hospital from 1998 to 2003, and is now on the board of Save Ellis Island. He was particularly moved by the realization that some patients could see the Statue of Liberty from their sickbeds. “She’s so close, and for many people who came to America and who never got out of that hospital, they never got to see any more than that,” Mr. Wilkes said. JR is not a believer in ghosts, or at least he wasn’t before this project. “It is a perfect situation for a stuck soul,” he said. “I was really anxious before my first pasting,” he continued, thinking of those souls who “might encounter their own image.”