Back in its heyday, New York's Ellis Island was the busiest immigration inspection station in America, with some 12 million immigrants passing through its gates between 1892 and 1954. At its peak, some 5,000 people were inspected daily.

Augustus Francis Sherman, the chief registry clerk at Ellis Island was an avid amateur photographer who documented the immigrants that were inspected at his place of work. Captioned with only his subject's country of origin, the photos were published in National Geographic in 1907, and showed various immigrants in their finest national garbs.

Now, Jordan Lloyd of Dynamichrome has colorized some of these photos, letting us visualize what these early American immigrants looked like IRL.

These are a handful of the 130 photographs that are going to be published in a book titled The Paper Time Machine, which is currently being crowdfunded. Head over to Mashable to see more.

For more great snaps, check out the winners of the 2016 iPhone Photography Awards.