Picture the Homeless

Excerpts from the essay, "The Nature of Hart Island," by Melinda Hunt and published in: Hart Island, Melinda Hunt/Joel Sternfeld, Scalo, Zurich, Berlin, New York, 1998.

“New York is the only major American city to maintain a separate public burial ground for its strangers, for those who die alone and unclaimed or for whom nobody is willing or able to afford a private funeral--a potter's field. The term "potter's field" refers to the land purchased for the burial of strangers just outside of town and comes from a passage in Matthew 27:5-7 (New American Bible. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC. Benziger, Inc., New York/Berverly Hills, 1970):

• ‘So Judas flung the money into the temple and left. He went off and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the silver, observing, 'It is not right to deposit this in the temple treasury since it is blood money.' After consultation, they used it to buy the potter's field as a cemetery for foreigners.’

Since its purchase in 1869, three quarters of a million people have been buried on Hart Island making it the most dense cemetery in America. This public burial ground is difficult to visit because it is administered by the prison authorities. Inmates serving short-term sentences are bused in from nearby Riker's Island to perform the daily burials.

The Hart Island Project is a journey to this forbidden burial ground. The path proceeds through the front office of the New York City Department of Correction, the only route available to anyone trying to locate family. Those who make the trip to Hart Island usually leave feeling unsettled. They have visited a part of America which is more unacknowledged than unknown….”

"Found on Hart Island are fragments of American history which have simply been abandoned. The Hart Island Project is about revisiting these fragments in photographs, stories, documents, installations, public art and filmmaking. It parallels the experiences of many people in search of their beginnings in America."

"Hart Island is the product of a longstanding system of public burials dating back to the British colonial period. It is New York's ninth potter's field. Located in the remote waters of the Long Island Sound, the island was originally 16 miles from the city limit. It compares with each of the earlier potter's fields which were always located on the edges of the expanding city. Each, in its day, was situated near to Bellevue Hospital, the location of the city morgue and the primary place where recent immigrants and the poor received medical attention."

"Each of the potter's fields were founded at the remote rugged, and almost rural edges of the city in their day. Each burial ground was filled with recent immigrants, victims of disease and poverty and children. Burial records indicate a remarkable consistency in the proportion of burials due to infant mortality. Close to fifty percent of burials are children under five. As each potter's field became full, a new natural setting was selected."