Between roughly 1905 and 1925, Augustus Frederick Sherman produced hundreds of portraits at Ellis Island—inviting newly landed immigrants to be photographed, and at times to open their luggage, put on what traditional dress they had carried to America, and pose. The resulting images became an unintended farewell to the old world: a last, formal wearing of the clothes, customs, and identities that many of these individuals would soon set aside. Sherman was not a photographer by profession; he was the Chief Clerk at America's entry point, responsible for its clerical staff and reviewing the appeals of those whose admission was in question. Photography was entirely outside his remit, and while the portraits were never made in an official capacity, they captured a telling moment of threshold—the instant between one life and another.

His subjects do not appear as huddled masses. They appear as individuals—self-possessed, often formally composed, announcing themselves to a new world on their own terms. Together they constitute a portrait of the many worlds that converged at New York—the cultures, languages, and traditions that would, in time, become the city itself.

Sherman's photographs remained largely institutional—published in the annual reports of the Commissioner of Immigration and occasionally supplied to the press to illustrate the station's work. Naturally, these photographs were used and in most cases destroyed; consequently, vintage prints are scarcely available. In 2005 a monograph was published by Aperture in conjunction with a major exhibition, offering for the first time a coherent view of Sherman's photographs.