Ellis Island, February 1989

Artist David Simonton American, born 1953

Date1989; printed 2004

MediumGelatin-silver print

DimensionsImage: 4 3/16 x 6 15/16 in. (10.6 x 17.6 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the William R. Roberson Jr. and Frances M. Roberson Endowed Fund for North Carolina Art

Object number2004.2.2

On View

Not on view

Label TextDavid Simonton’s photographs include images from a 1980s series recording the restoration of the Ellis Island Immigration Station in New York and from a project commissioned by the Museum in 2000 to document the vacant Polk Youth Center that once occupied the Museum grounds. The haunting images from both projects, the abandoned prison and the dilapidated immigration station¬—sites laden with history and memories¬—are eerily similar. In 1990 Simonton embarked on an ongoing project to photograph the towns of North Carolina. For more than a decade, he has traversed the state (literally from A to Z—Asheville to Zebulon), and at this point he has photographed more than three hundred towns.

Simonton photographs the real world, in a way that makes the viewer look twice at places and things that would ordinarily be passed over—his view of North Carolina is the one that you see out of the corner of your eye. Always void of people but resonant with their ghosts, his photographs focus on the corners and cracks, the spaces in between, the places that have been deserted and abandoned—resulting in poetic, atmospheric images that allude to untold and enigmatic stories.
[L. Dougherty, 2007]

ProvenanceCreated Ellis Island, NY, 1989, printed 2004; collection of the artist, Raleigh, NC; sold to NCMA, 2004.
Exhibition HistoryEllis, Island, NY, Ellis Island Immigration Museum, "Photographers on Ellis Island, 1900-1990," 1990.

Durham, NC, Allenton Gallery, Durham Arts Council Building, "Ellis Island: 1988-1989," 1992.

Raleigh, NC, Municipal Building, "Ellis Island: A Singular Passage," n.d.

Salisbury, NC, Waterworks Visual Arts Center, "Ellis Island: The Complete Portfolio," 1990; Raleigh, NC, Frankie G. Weems Gallery, Meredith College, 1990.

Raleigh, NC, NC Academy of Trial Lawyers, "Ellis Island Photographs," 1997.

Louisburg, NC, Louisburg College, "Ellis Island Photographs," 1998.

Raleigh, NC, School of Design, North Carolina State University, "Ellis Island Photographs," 1999.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Contemporary NC Photography from the Museum's Collection," (part 1) September 3-November 5, 2006.
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