THE NEWEST ARRIVALS.

Refuge: The Newest New Yorkers

Photographs by Mel Rosenthal and text by Jack Salzman

New York Historical Society

New York, New York

April 20-July 20, 1999

Roberson Museum and Science Center

Binghamton, New York 

September 27,1 999-February 6, 2000

Tyler Art Gallery

Oswego, New York 

March 3-April 2, 2000

Ellis Island Immigration Museum

New York, New York

May 25-September 6, 2000

Balch Institute

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

September 11-February 16, 2001

Now that photographs are more easily manipulated and more often elaborately staged than ever before, photography is losing its traditional function as evidence of reality. Yet Mel Rosenthal believes in the veracity of photographs. "Refuge: The Newest New Yorkers," an exhibition of Rosenthal's photographs of newly arrived immigrants in New York State, organized by The New York State Museum in Albany, proves that photographic evidence can still be compelling when the photographer believes in his work. Rosenthal's images are politically charged, archetypal representations of immigrants that often have special significance to ethnic groups in each community where they are shown.

The show consists of 78 black and white photographs presented in traditional photographic documentary format of straightforward images accompanied by explanatory text. All are undistorted, conventional compositions, eloquent in their simplicity and similar to the photographs of August Sander. Rosenthal's images capture the search for identity and sense of belonging experienced by immigrants in the United States. They portray the immigrants' struggle as dignified, without referring to the exploitation they often suffer at the hands of landlords and employers. Rosenthal's selective representation of immigrants reflects his political interest in maintaining the U.S. immigration policy. His story of American immigration is one of individual struggle and success set against the backdrop of the American Dream, the belief that if you work hard, there is enough fairness in this country to allow you to prosper. In Cambodian Children in the Bronx (1983), two shirtless boys photographed in a Bronx apartment encapsulate how Rosenthal sees the refugee experience. One of the boys sleeps on a sofa while the other stares complacently at the camera, arms raised apprehensively. Half-naked, they are vulnerable--conveying a sense of relief in escaping the dangers of their homeland and of anxiety toward an uncertain future in their new home.

Since 1983, Rosenthal has been photographing refugees who have arrived in the U.S. and are faced with the task of reconciling their past with their future while finding their new identities. The exhibition constructs a narrative leading to that goal. New arrivals stand in stark contrast to the cultural norms of the U.S. In Hmong Women, Liverpool (1992) two women in traditional dress from Laos stand in front of a ranch house outside Syracuse, NY. Many of Rosenthal's images capture anxiety and bewilderment on the part of the immigrants. In Kurdish Families (1992) a man in Johnson City, NY, looking reticent and clutching his worry beads, stands with his family. The photograph demonstrates that the family's identity is heavily dependent on their still-forming sense of belonging. Rosenthal's photographs suggest that refugees find their identities in the U.S. by both honoring their own cultural traditions and by immersing themselves in American culture and in the work that they do. Some of the immigrants are more successful than others. A Haitian police officer at the Caribbean Day parade in Brooklyn (1996) displays his shield in a way that shows that this is not just what he does for a living, this is who he is. In Palestinian Girl (1998), the subject seems self-conscious about both the wrap on her head and the rollerblades on her feet. Amerasians getting married at the bride's home (1992) symbolizes the stability and comfort refugees draw from each other through their shared experiences. A Buddhist charm worn by the bride shows that the couple has survived the horrors of their previous lives and reconciled their past and their future.

The photographs are accompanied by text written by Rosenthal and Jack Salzman, former director of the Center for American Cultural Studies at Columbia University. "Refuge," Salzman writes, "comes at a time when the United States is rethinking its attitude towards people seeking a new home." Since the Immigration Act of 1990, legal immigration has dropped by more than 50% and national policy continues to limit immigrants' access to health care, welfare and education. [1] Salzman celebrates and scrutinizes U.S. immigration policy in the same breath. "Rather remarkably, a country whose very existence has been defined by its ability to become home to people seeking a new life is once again debating its willingness to welcome and be shaped by newcomers."

In this context, the photographs become even more politically charged. Rosenthal favors more generous policies that provide refuge for all those who need to escape wars or abusive governments. He says that presently, "A refugee may or may not have legal refugee status." Salzman explains that "the distinction [between immigrant and refugee], after all, too often seems to be determined by the politics of the moment. So Cubans and some Iranians are granted refugee status, but Tibetans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans and some Haitians are not." Rosenthal refers to many of the people he photographs as "refugees from the cold war," [2] maintaining that the dominance of U.S. and Soviet interests abroad forced significant ethnic migration. There are photographs of southeast Asians who fled ongoing wars, of Central Americans whose countries were filled with armies backed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union and of refugees from the former Yugoslavia where U.S. and Russian interests continue to clash. There are photographs of Iraqis, Kurds, Somalis and refugees from the former Soviet Union. Together they catalog the consequences of war and the violations of human rights around the world in the last half of the twentieth century.

In the tradition of socially concerned photography, Rosenthal wishes to further the cause of refugees. Understanding that photographic veracity in general is waning, he increases his credibility with local audiences by creating special versions of the show for each venue. In Oswego, NY, 32 of the 78 photographs in the exhibition showed people who have settled near Oswego and Syracuse. Similar numbers were reflected at the Binghamton and New York City sites. The exhibition is a vehicle to introduce museum visitors to neighbors in their own communities and to stimulate visits to the museum by recent refugees. When the New York Historical Society held a reception for the show, a group of Palistinian refugees brought food without asking museum staff. A table was hastily put up in the middle of the gallery, suddenly turning the sophisticated opening reception into a homespun affair with the refugees themselves taking control. Two years ago the show was exhibited at the Munson-Willams Proctor Institute in Utica, N Y. Visitors were invited to express reactions in a comment book, revealing that many of the them were themselves refugees who praised the museum for showing photographs of their neighbors. "How fortunate we are to have the refugee center in Utica," one wrote.

In most of the venues, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service cooperated with Rosenthal and museum officials by holding naturalization ceremonies in conjunction with the exhibition. Politicians spoke, judges administered the oaths and newly naturalized citizens cheered. Political and ideological abstractions disappeared as the galleries filled with exuberant people whose struggles and successes parallel those depicted in the photographs. In such an environment, the exhibition comes to represent a drama that is very much a part of real life.

Rosenthal carries the tradition of the work of such photographers as Lewis Hine from the early part of the century with one obvious difference: the ease with which today's immigrants absorb U.S. culture implies that they were exposed to it long before arriving. Newly arrived ethnic Vietnamese children watching a Disney movie and eating pizza indicate an extraordinarily rapid assimilation--much faster than their short time in the U.S. would otherwise afford. Today's immigrants are not so much struggling to assimilate as they are struggling to rediscover who they are and where they belong in their new home. They should remind all of us who have descended from immigrants of our own ancestors' endurance.

CARL SCHAFER is a freelance writer and Registrar at the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

NOTES

(1.) U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service Office of Policy and Planning Statistics Branch, Annual Report, May 1999, p. 2.

(2.) Interview with Mel Rosenthal, January 1999.