These photographs of the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital reflect its present condition: half abandoned and half saved, our feelings toward it as conflicted as our relationship with immigration itself. We honor our immigrant ancestors while trying to keep them firmly in the past, and we unconsciously repeat the ambiguous reception given our forebears by those who were already here. Wealthy immigrants were welcomed, but the tired, the poor, the huddled masses required inspection for physical and mental health; and when illness was found, families might be separated, children from parents. That happened at the hospital. For many this detour from our golden door was a place of fearful loneliness. At one time the largest public health facility in America, it was closed in 1954 and allowed to fall into ruin. There is a popular idea that the place is haunted, but I did not go there looking for ghosts--or rather, I did not go thinking they had to be searched out. These photographs are an effort to show that the ghost is the hospital itself, one of many places we cannot forget but do not want to remember.