In 2019, four months before our world was upended by a virus, I visited the abandoned infectious disease hospital on Ellis Island. Throughout 2020 as I edited these images, it struck me, again and again, how the the 100 years separating us from our ancestors can feel like a thin veil that, under unique circumstances like our own 21st Century plague, becomes transparent and connects us viscerally with our past.

These murals were created with photographs from the Ellis Island archives, installed by French artist JR in 2014, run throughout the abandoned buildings and haunt me still.

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