One hundred years ago, in 1898, the boroughs of Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx were consolidated into one geopolitical unit, forming New York City as we know it today. While four of the five boroughs are true islands, they are rarely perceived as such. New York City, in fact, is an archipelago: each of the smaller islands has a separate identity and a history intimately intertwined with the larger metropolis.

The usage of these land masses has been shaped by social policies and political expediencies. Various city agencies govern individual islands, yet there exists on the islands a laissez-faire climate and a sense of isolation. They are, after all, frontiers bound by water.

The islands have been used for: quarantine, potter's fields, warehouses for the deserving and undeserving poor, army bases and forts, lunatic asylums, sewage disposal, shipbuilding, homeless shelters, juvenile reformatories, toxic waste dumps, charity hospitals, immigrant way stations, prisons, drug rehabilitation centers, physical support for bridges and monuments and a Nike missile base. In some instances, they simultaneously provide parks for leisure and relaxation, residential structures for homes and valuable real estate. Amidst all of this, birds have reclaimed several islands once dominated by heavy industry and small mammals have taken others.

These holms have been and still are safe havens for some, places of exile for others, remote landscapes...New York City's backyard.