In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy » (1st Edition)

Anna Pegler-Gordon is Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at Michigan State University.

"This beautifully written and illustrated study is a significant intervention in the histories of photography and of immigration. It excitingly shows how the state's efforts to picture and control migrants moved from one group of subjects to the next and how technological advances called forth new forms of immigrant resistance."—David Roediger, author of How Race Survived U.S. History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon

List of Figures xi

List of Tables xv

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1

1 First Impressions: Chinese Exclusion and the Introduction of Immigration Documentation, 1875-1909 22

2 Photographic Paper Sons: Resisting Immigration Identity Documentation, 1893-1943 67

3 Ellis Island as an Observation Station: Spectacle and Inspection, 1892-1924 104

4 Ellis Island as a Photo Studio: The Honorific Ethnographic Image, 1904-26 123

5 The Imaginary Line: Passing and Passports on the Mexican-U.S. Border, 1906-17 174

6 The Dividing Line: Documentation on the Mexican-U.S. Border, 1917-34 192

Conclusion 221

Notes 231

Bibliography 279

Index 307