Paul Margolis: Hidden Ellis Island

Paul Margolis exhibits photographs of unrestored sections of New York's Ellis Island in the Living Room Gallery at Saint Peter's Church April 9 - June 30, 2014. Free and open to the public daily.

This installation is presented by Midtown Arts Common in cooperation with Saint Peter's Church.

Planning your visit

Saint Peter's Church is located at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and 54th Street in midtown Manhattan.

Gallery hours: daily 9:00 A.M. - 7:00 P.M.
The Church building sometimes closes early.
Call 212 935 2200 for exact closing times.

Saint Peter’s Church is accessible to all people at the building entrances on Lexington Avenue and on 54th Street.

The E, M (weekdays only), 4, 5 and 6 trains stop nearby. As do the M57, M31, M50, M101 and M103 buses.

About the work

In early 2002, Paul Margolis photographed the interiors of the decaying buildings on the un-restored south side of Ellis Island. These buildings served prosaic and often sad purposes: they were the wards and medical facilities. They had a haunting beauty, with their subtle, almost monochromatic colors: greens and rust, old brick and peeling plaster.

Ellis Island also had personal significance for the artist: two of his grandparents passed through the immigrant processing center when they came from Europe in the early years of the 20th century.

About the artist

Paul Margolis first picked up a camera at the age of 9. He is a largely self-taught documentary and fine art photographer whose subjects include people living on the margins of society, vanishing Americana, historic architecture, and the vibrancy of life on New York City’s streets.

A unique quality of Paul’s work is his ability to capture, preserve and convey the sense of vanishing worlds. He often combines images with text, both his own and in collaboration with writers and historians. While he has adapted to digital photography, he still works extensively with black and white film, which he processes and prints himself.

His projects have included documenting the small Jewish communities of Cuba and Ireland, as well as Jewish poverty in New York City. In the wake of September 11, 2001, he recorded the effects of the destruction of the World Trade Center on New York. More recently, he has been photographing small-venue performers in New York and old-time trades and crafts that still flourish in the city. He also did the photography for an updated historical guidebook to the Lower East Side and Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan, which was published by Columbia University Press in 2009. His work has been exhibited and published, and is in museums, historical archives and private collections.

Documentary and fine art photography have always been Paul’s first loves; however, his background includes working as an editor, teacher, photojournalist and commercial photographer. He has an M.A. degree in Teaching from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and a B.A. in History from Bard College. Paul Margolis lives in New York City and works for the City of New York as a photographer and researcher.