Romolo Sciotti
Born in 1895 in Italy
Immigrated to United States in 1911
Coal miner, steel and auto worker
I got a letter from my brother here. Surprise me. I got ticket for the boat, for the train. So I come to America. I was a kid. Sixteen years old. Nobody I know on the boat. You meet other people, but suppose that one’s a German and this one’s a Polack, and every kind.
That was a coal mining town [in Pennsylvania]. Say maybe two, three hundred people. All immigrants. One mine to another. Then I got sick and tired of it. I got four boys. I said, “I don’t want to see you in the coal mines.” I move to the steel mills. Before Roosevelt there was too damn many rich people running this country. If you open your mouth a little bit they’ll get you somehow. John Mitchell in Chicago, they killed him. I vote for Roosevelt all the time. Roosevelt was the best president in United States of America.
Between 1980 and 1983 Robert Gordon interviewed and photographed 50 Detroit area immigrants who came to the United States prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. What had been a steady influx of immigrants throughout the 19th century exploded in the period immediately prior to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. From 1901 to 1910, a total of 8.8 million people immigrated to the United States. In the following decade, despite the First World War, another 5.8 million came to our shores.
When Dr. Gordon was working on this project in the early 1980s, he was aware that the world these immigrants left when they came to the United States was gone. Thirty years later the world they came to and the world they made are also gone. Now, these immigrants themselves are gone.
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Magdalena
Good to see you featured here.
Kind man, kind photo
Kind man, kind photo
This project will be exhibited at the Ann Arbor District Library from Sep 2 through Oct 14, 2010.
Looking for additional exhibition venues and a publisher.
I urge all documentary photographers to submit one of their projects to this fascinating site. Good luck.
Two of my favorite on-line documentary photography sites are the New York Times “One in 8 Million” series and “Magnum in Motion”. Both make great use of still photography combined with audio.
Isn't this eyeopening/ without immigrants this country wouldn't be what it is today. It belongs to all and not to aberrant, past eras, slave holding Texas, nor red neck or fundamentalist religious sects. Open your eyes to the past and you can build a better future
This is a really wonderful series. The way the interviews read I assume they were transcribed from tape recordings. Like to know more about Dr Gordon – Still alive and were these people his patients? His straightforward approach on these portraits rivals professional documentary shooters. Also similar to Mike Disfarmers portraits of his neighbors in Arkansas in the 1930s & '40s.
This photo is of my sons great grandfather. How great this is to see.