As one who works on genealogy in her spare time, I have always (well, since I was a teenager) been interested in immigration.  This is why when I came across two prints showing before and after images of a gentleman who emigrated to the United States, I wanted to share them.  Immigrants are a vital part of our country and who we are, despite how horribly they have often been treated.

I think what I liked most about these two prints is what they imply.  The first, titled “Outward Bound”, shows a man who is clearly poor and fallen upon hard times studying an advertisement for a ship to New York and holding what is most likely his last coin.  The second image shows the same man (at least I assume it’s the same man) cleaned up and well dressed, clearly much better off than he was in Ireland, looking at an advertisement for a ship back to Ireland.   Read more