American Immigrant Memory (AIM) Project is an online repository of photographs that speaks to the collective experience of immigrants in the United States.
Photography is a language that needs little translation. It is powerful and universal. As a collection, the photographs on AIM create a dialog that clarifies and amplifies the immigrant voice and presents the United States as the multi-cultural and diverse country that it is.
Using the Internet as a platform, AIM establishes a space to share and view imagery making it accessible beyond the confines of geographic locations and institutional walls.
And because photography and the Internet are ever-present in our lives, here, on AIM, we can utilize both to create a narrative that challenges our cultural perceptions of what the U.S. American experience is. It can be a synergetic merging of personal photographs with the public sphere of the Internet, the familial with the communal, in an effort to inspire and unite us.
If you are in the United States of America, you most likely descend from a relative who crossed borders by land, sea, or air, with the hope and dream that this nation would welcome them. Tell us about your experience by sharing your photographs, new and old, on AIM. These could be photographs scanned from a family photo album of 100 years ago, or a moment today captured with your camera phone.
AIM was started by two photographers: Kathya Landeros and Fritz Hoffmann. We see ourselves not as curators or editors, but moderators. The success of this project is dependent on you. Please join us in realizing AIM.