?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
SHERMAN, AUGUSTUS (1865-1925) Group of 10 photographs of immigrants at Ellis Island. Silver prints, 6 1/4x4 1/2 inches (15.9x11.4 cm.), with a brief typewritten caption on verso. Circa 1905
From the Estate of Susan H. Clay, who worked for the King Library Press at the University of Kentucky, and mounted a show of Sherman's and Lewis Hine's photographs at the Skydome Gallery.
Man in hat and costume Greek Priest Wallachian-Austrian children Religious fanatic Hungarian-Slovak woman and children Servian gypsies Norwegian Girl Cossacks Alsace Lorraine Women and 3 children.
The amateur photographer Augustus Sherman, whose photographs are in the collection of the New York Public Library, was Chief Registry Clerk at Ellis Island. Apparently, Sherman's elaborately costumed subjects were detainees--immigrants who were held at the newly constructed facility and waiting for an escort, or money, or travel tickets. Many of these subjects posed for Sherman, donning their best holiday finery or national dress.
Sherman's pictures were published in National Geographic in 1907, and for decades were displayed (uncredited) at the federal Immigration Service. Correspondence suggests that the Commissioner gave copies of Sherman's haunting photographs to official Ellis Island visitors as mementoes.
Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits 1905-1920 (New York: Aperture, 2005).
