Chicago, February 2004 - "I grew up with a longing for my Italian heritage, to know my grandparents who had come to America long before I was born....Their immigrant stories were told to me the way one receives a prayer, and part of my history was made in their repeating." So begins the artist's introductory essay by Gina J. Grillo in Between Cultures: Children of Immigrants in America (March 2004, $29.95), the second book of photography in a series, published by The Center for American Places in collaboration with Columbia College Chicago.
Grillo's personal commitment to exploring immigrant life in the United States has turned into a creative odyssey. Since 1996 the photographer has documented the faces and captured the souls of the young people whose lives straddle two cultures. In her early twenties, employed at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Grillo's personal interest in her immigrant heritage broadened to encompass larger issues of immigration and acculturation. Later returning to graduate school to pursue an MFA in photography, she was influenced by the work of Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine and Augustus Sherman and her course was set.
She began by haunting the lines outside Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), later negotiating entry to citizenship swearing in ceremonies, exploring immigrant neighborhoods and ultimately being invited by the INS to photograph new immigrant families arriving at O'Hare. This opportunity led Grillo to develop relationships with individuals, enriching not only her work, but also her understanding of her own heritage. The images in Between Cultures capture families' experiences arriving in Chicago as new Americans and chronicle their integration into urban life - in new neighborhoods, with family, at cultural celebrations, citizenship ceremonies and many other everyday scenes. "When I started Between Cultures, I didn't realize the gift of stepping back to look at my own life and to examine the meaning of the immigrant journey. My photographic journey seems as unquestionable to me as my grandparents coming to America."
"[In] Gina J. Grillo's telling photographs, one discovers faces filled with joy and radiant expectation, others show stoic calmness, still others reveal questioning wariness and, it seems at times, sadness," writes historian Leo Schelbert in the book's conclusion. "Great longing for what they had to leave behind coupled with unease about their new surroundings, with their different tongue, lifestyle, and occasional disdain and hostility, seem to fill their souls. Grillo's masterful look at children of immigrants in contemporary America provides a unique perspective on the newcomers' enduring challenges."
A major traveling exhibition of Between Cultures: Children of Immigrants in America opens on February 14 at The Ellis Island Immigration History Museum in New York City. Between Cultures: Children of Immigrants in America will be in bookstores in March and is distributed by University of Chicago Press ($29.95 hardcover).
Gina Grillo has taught photography at Columbia College Chicago since 1997. Her work documenting children of immigrants to America has been on exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Field Museum, The Children's Immigration Museum, the Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and was recently selected for "The Spirit of Family," a book and exhibition project produced by Al and Tipper Gore. Her photographs have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Exito, Interiors, New World Publications, Migration World and Family Support Magazine. She has done documentary projects for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Family Resource Coalition and the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights.
Future editions in the photography series co-published by The Center for American Places and Columbia College Chicago include You're Not From Around Here by Michael Smith (April 2004); Place, Art, and Self by Yi-F Tuan (April 2004) and The Dan Ryan Expressway by Jay Wolke (October 2004), among many others.
NOTE: Gina J. Grillo is available for interviews. Review copies of "Between Cultures" available.
Media Contact: Micki Leventhal, 312-344-7383