Brooklyn Museum: Photography: Climbing into the Promised Land, Ellis Island

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Climbing into the Promised Land, Ellis Island

Trained as a sociologist, Lewis Wickes Hine began a career in photography in 1905, when, as a teacher, he brought his class to Ellis Island. While encouraging his students to use cameras as part of their studies, Hines himself started to photograph and ultimately became a photojournalist. In this extraordinary image, immigrants in heavy coats and with their paperwork in hand climb a congested staircase in the process of becoming American citizens; Hine managed to juggle a huge, awkward camera while manipulating a crude device loaded with flash powder in order to compose this gripping picture of hope, confusion, and excitement. When he died, in 1940, Hine left behind a legacy of several thousand images of dazzling quality and social import, many of them portraits of workers, often children.

Artist: Lewis Wickes Hine, American, 1874-1940
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dates: 1908
Dimensions: 14 x 10 1/2 in. (35.6 x 26.7 cm)
Markings: Ink stamp on verso: "Lewis Hine interpretive photography, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York"
Signature: Signed on verso in pencil: "Hine"
Collections: Photography
Museum Location: This item is not on view
Accession Number: 84.237.1
Credit Line: Gift of Walter and Naomi Rosenblum
Image: Overall, 84.237.1_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph

Collections: Photography: Climbing into the Promised Land, Ellis Island