As a freelance journalist covering such topics as health, psychology, and social issues, I’ve had the privilege of letting my work follow my curiosity, whether that’s about why our bodies and minds operate in the manner they do, how grief and trauma sideline or transform us, or how our society responds to social crises.

These days, my curiosity more often circles a complex question: where do we come from? Complex because embedded within that question are others: What difference does it make what our origin stories are? How does who and where we come from make us who we are?

That’s why I’m captivated by the images in this photo I took on my first visit to Ellis Island. Who are these people? Why did they leave their homes and what did they leave behind? What family secrets did they hold? I wonder what became of them, how their lives in a new country unfolded, and whether there might be a visitor who stands before one of these images not knowing that they’re gazing into the eyes of an ancestor. Looking out from these photographs are someone’s grandparents or great-grandparents. Maybe mine. Perhaps yours. And they have stories to tell. 

These photographs, part of an installation called Unframed, Ellis Island, are the work of the extraordinary French street artist JR, who in 2014 mined archival images taken roughly 100 years ago of people who passed through or briefly inhabited Ellis Island’s hospital.

He blew them up and pasted them onto the crumbling walls, broken windows, and dilapidated floors of these abandoned areas, closed to visitors since 1954, when the last immigrants arrived.

JR’s work underscores the facts that our personal histories are often hidden and are always fragile. He created the exhibit with no expectation it would be seen. It was only after the installation was complete that these ghostly spaces were opened to the public, and only to those who take the “Hard Hat” tour. According to Save Ellis Island, which is tasked with preserving the historic hospital buildings, the exhibit will remain until it erodes.

Take a look at my essays to see the journey of family discovery I’m taking. And tell me about yours!