The Welcomes / As benvidas / Las bienvenidas

Curated by James D. Fernández and Luis Argeo, “The Welcomes / As benvidas / Las bienvenidas” is an exhibition of early twentieth-century photographs of Spanish (Galician) immigrants in New York.

James D. Fernández and Luis Argeo, authors of the book Invisible Immigrants: Spaniards in the US 1868-1945, have spent almost ten years digitizing the family archives of descendants of Spaniards who emigrated to the U.S.

In counterpoint with “The Goodbyes”, which highlights the sweet sorrow of partings, “The Welcomes” documents and celebrates the bitter joys of arrivals. The show uses unique and private images from family albums to help us imagine how the advice and pleas uttered through tears on those Galician docks continued to echo in the minds of the emigrants as they struggled and adapted to their new lives in the U.S.