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Back Central14 Cedar Street, October 21, 2021
I never imagined I would cross the Atlantic Ocean to teach and call a house in the Back Central neighborhood my home.
Nor had I dreamed I would so often be welcomed, in this historically Portuguese community, with a covered dish for dinner laid outside my door.
Standing outside the basement where I lived, I listened to the end of day sounds and wondered what other mysteries awaited me. -
02 / 50North Street, November 18, 2021
I soon realized I could cover the entire neighborhood of Back Central on foot and walked all its streets, stopping to compare the way the houses are built and the spaces between them.
Welcomed by a beautiful day, I looked down the street at the view and noticed the neighbor’s metal gate left wide open.
Mobility is a hallmark of any immigrant trajectory, and your house grows as does your prosperity. Families group and children arrive, and the memory of place takes hold in every recitation of the individual’s journey. -
03 / 5044 Cedar Street, November 8, 2021
A pledge of allegiance, or two. How can your loyalty be split between flags? To whom does your heart belong? Who can lay claim to you first?
Maybe time is the solution to this conundrum, and precedence trumps provenance.
The thin blue line on the Stars and Stripes tells its own story of support for law enforcement, while the unadorned Portuguese standard stands for a place with fewer opportunities, but also lesser evils. -
04 / 5059 Charles Street, November 18, 2021
The façade of the Portuguese American Center tells its own story, however incompletely. It harbors a dining and dance hall, bar, marching band and music school, soccer club, and, before Covid, a day center for the elderly.
Founded in 1954, the social club known to all as “The Blues” is the main rival of “The Reds,” the Portuguese American Civic League, on Central Street.
Facing north, the entrance reflects the sunlit side of the street where I stood, and, facing the mirrored doors, I decided to become invisible. -
05 / 50139 Chapel Street, November 11, 2021
Often, and without warning, symbols of Portuguese belief jump out to greet the neighborhood wanderer.
This lofty, manicured garden is a fitting tribute to faith and accomplishments and provides as good a place as any for a statue of Our Lady of Fátima.
Frozen, standing tall and open armed, the figure does not feign her own amazement for being the center of such adoration. -
06 / 50180 Lawrence Street, November 8, 2021
As I walked the city at night, I wondered in disbelief at my good fortune for having inadvertently stumbled into such a storied, layered and complex community.
The Japanese maple, illustrated here, was given the name Acer Palmatum by Carl Thunberg in the 18th Century because the shape of the leaves mimics the palm of a hand.
I was humbled by the open arms that welcomed my every question or move. -
07 / 50Father Grillo Park, 853 Central Street, November 11, 2021
Father Grillo Park is a memorial to the pastor appointed to St. Anthony’s Church in 1924, who oversaw the installation of a new floor, sanctuary, and sculptures.
He bolstered the parish organizations, encouraged athletic competitions and supported a fife and drum band. Father Grillo also resuscitated the annual parish picnic. Parishioners’ names were set in clay on the Park’s sidewalk.
Like the tiles in the old Benfica stadium in Lisbon, which my father pointed out as we entered the venue in fear of an invincible Liverpool Football Club, and that were emblazoned with individual sponsors’ names. -
08 / 50467 Central Street, November 20, 2021
This address boasts a two-story building covered in grey vinyl siding. There is nothing special about the house, or its façade, as though a conscious effort had been made to blend in with the surroundings.
Except for two labels naming Rivera and Lima, and a unit number for Apt 35, one would be at odds to identify its residents.
And yet, a relaxed, hanging sliver of color of red and green is enough to offset its stolid presence by quietly claiming it’s place in the world. -
09 / 50810 Central Street, November 23, 2021
The corner of Central and Whipple Streets is where Frank and Ernest opened shop, offering a slew of services. I was told this was the place to go if I wanted to transfer money or cash a check. I didn’t.
Instead, I stood outside and let the green, lit awning work its way into my memory of places that I had never visited except on a painter’s canvas. The hue is unmistakenly that of a certain diner that catered to nighthawks in another town, in another time.
Like them, the patrons I saw enter or leave shared the same weighted shoulders and shuffled silence. Somehow, I never walked in. -
10 / 50Agência Internacional, 599 Central Street, October 28, 2021
Agência Internacional is a travel agency that belongs to Luís and Natália Melo.
Not only can you book a flight, reserve a container on a ship or send and receive cargo by suitcase, but you can also expedite consular and immigration affairs, or simply sit and become part of an ongoing conversation.
The warmth and knowledgeable grace with which the owners solve all matters is as comforting as it is efficient, and only Flash, the cat, warrants any concern, justifying the warnings to pat the feline at one’s own peril. -
11 / 5014 Cedar Street, October 31, 2021
Lilly Anne, a Chihuahua with a hearing impairment, lives with her caretakers, Linda and José.
Linda, who is from New Hampshire, is a Dallas Cowboys fan and José, who was born in Madeira, only cares for the New England Patriots. On game days, Linda will dress in a cowgirl outfit and wear a white Stetson.
Halloween is a magical affair, and the equivalence between a dog and a pumpkin may be boundless, but the color orange points to a quietly shared predicament by these actors. -
12 / 50330 Concord Street, November 4, 2021
Alvarina Braga’s 1961 red convertible Thunderbird was a gift from her husband, one she lovingly cherishes.
Covered with a tarp, the car is pristine and only shown to privileged visitors. As the passenger door was uncovered and opened, its lush, unabashed interior greeted my eyes with the vanity of a living organism.
Mrs. Braga is quick to recall how she would be ceremoniously driven by her husband in every year’s June 10th “Day of Portugal” parade, basking in the glow of the warm sun and the onlookers’ glare. -
13 / 50558 Gorham Street, November 8, 2021
The A&R African Restaurant and Market is living proof that the Back Central neighborhood is in continual transition. As other communities are drawn here, they shift its unique blend of cultural heritage and taste in fashion.
Facing the Lowell Connector, the market is a couple of doors down from the house reported in 2005 by the Lowell Sun as being crashed into by cars twice in a year.
The assembly of reclining and incomplete mannequins offer 14 options for covering one’s legs, each one proposing a distinct set of expectations and outcomes. -
14 / 50192 Lawrence Street, November 18, 2021
Cezarina Agrella, born in Graciosa, Portugal, in 1954, is rightly concerned about the effect of the approaching inclement weather on the images of Our Lady of Fátima and the three shepherd children displayed in her front garden.
The Virgin Mary’s apparition, reportedly witnessed by three children in Fátima, Portugal, in 1917. She is said to have revealed to them three secrets: a vision of Hell, the conversion of Russia to the Catholic faith, and the shooting of the Pope.
In Mrs. Agrella’s garden, the uncovered figures continue to kneel before their silenced and bound respondent. -
15 / 5014 Cedar Street, October 31, 2021
The two figurines, hanging on the kitchen wall of this basement apartment, are from the island of Madeira, Portugal. They are dressed in traditional costume; a young woman carrying a bowl laden with fruit and a young man carrying a barrel of wine on his shoulder.
Diagonally beneath them, a single tile is decorated with a lobster, a glass of beer and a red tomato, standing out from the other white tiles. To their left, a needlework curtain is emblazoned with hearts and flowers.
Nothing in this quaint arrangement, in the house bought by the current owner’s father, would have us believe he had worked with dynamite, blowing things up on a daily basis. -
16 / 5080 Chapel Street, November 23, 2021
I felt privileged as Maria Lobão opened the back door to her apartment at Cottage and Chapel Streets, and invited me to enter her space, allowing me to face the arrangement of photographs on her walls.
We had never shared an experience together, nor had I ever met anyone in her family.
Looking at the pictures and their placement, I too can say, like the photographer Walker Evans after photographing a Greek fisherman’s house in Biloxi, Mississippi: “Look at this with me, look at the expression of the value of pictures, the instinctive joy in pictures this wall shows”. -
17 / 50Virgínio Silva, in Agência Internacional, 599 Central Street, October 28, 2021
Virgínio Silva is ninety years of age in this photograph. He still manages to stroll down Central Street in the neighborhood where he has lived since arriving in the United States in 1961, at the age of 31.
Virgínio turned to the U.S. for fear of being conscripted to fight Portugal’s burgeoning war with its African colonies. In Lowell he worked seven years in a factory on Market Street that made lady’s belts, fourteen years in another that made electric power reactors, and later in construction as a welder. Virgínio retired at the age of 62 with “bad knees,” acquired when his job demanded that he kneel for prolonged periods.He met Teresa in Lowell and they were married three months later. They have three children. Teresa was born in Lowell but moved to Graciosa with her parents. In 1958 she returned to the city. She wrote a “Call Letter” (a letter that affirms a commitment to employ the person and is required by the INS for a visa to be issued) for her sister to join her in 1968 and later work for Wang Computers.
Before the pandemic, Virgínio was on the board of the Holy Ghost Society for many years, where he and Teresa volunteered to wash dishes at practically every event held. The couple lives in the house they bought in the 60’s, behind the hall of St. Anthony’s Church. They have three children, the eldest born in 1965, another in 1968, and the youngest son, in 1978. -
18 / 50Filomena Simão at home, November 11, 2021
Filomena Silva was born in 1957 in Covilhã, Portugal, and came to Lowell in 1975, at the age of 18. Her father, a skilled textile laborer in Portugal, was directly hired by a mill that needed workers with knowledge of outdated machinery. Filomena finished high school in Portugal and obtained a degree in Secretarial and Public Relations. She hadn’t wanted to come, but her father made a deal with her: if she didn’t like it here, she could go back home. She decided to stay.
Like her father, Filomena was very active in the Portuguese community, helping hundreds of Portuguese immigrants by translating their medical appointments without charge. Realizing the difficulties felt by immigrants who didn’t speaksufficient English, Filomena and four other Portuguese community members founded the Lowell Union of Portuguese Americans (LUPA), which operated on Central Street, opposite St. Anthony’s Church. To raise funds, LUPA started the Festas de São João (St. John), raised the Portuguese flag in the City Center on June 10, and animated the Back Central neighborhood with a parade of floats.
Filomena Simão was a host on local AM radio programs catering to the Portuguese community. “Today”, she says “I’m only a spare tire, I only do the shows that are leftover”. She helps to take care of her granddaughter every day.
Filomena continued her studies in America, becoming an assistant bank manager. She, together with her husband who was from Graciosa, owned several properties including a coffee shop and a liquor store, which closed in 2011. -
19 / 50José Pereira at home, October 30, 2021
José Pereira was born on the island of Madeira, Portugal, in 1960 and arrived in Lowell in 1966. He wore shoes for the first time in his life to make the trip to the U.S., entering through Ellis Island, where his family was processed. Their photographs are arranged in the picture frame.
A roofer for most of his life, José says that joining the Union was the best thing he ever did — he has had work every day and will have a proper retirement pension. After hurricane Katrina swept New Orleans, José was dispatched by his chapter to work rebuilding houses.
He lives in the house his parents bought two years after arriving in Lowell, which he has extensively renovated. Back in the day, José played hockey on Back Central’s frozen streets with his classmates.
José keeps an old Camaro in the yard. He is lovingly restoring it for his grandson who will receive it as gift when he turns sixteen. -
20 / 50George Oliveira in the Portuguese American Center, November 14, 2021
George Oliveira was born in 1945 in Ovar, Portugal. He completed his compulsory military service in Guinea-Bissau, Africa, the worst of the Portuguese Colonial War theaters. Jorge arrived in Lowell in 1971 and worked first at a Canada Dry plant making $9 an hour. Every time a bottle broke, he would jump, thinking it was the sound of gunfire.
Active in the community, he played soccer well into his ‘50s at the Portuguese American Center, the “Azuis” (“The Blues”) and later trained their rivals, the Portuguese American Civic League, “The Reds.”
George hosts a long-running weekly radio show on WUML, specifically developed for the Portuguese community, and also presents a tv program on Channel 95 that showcases local happenings and people of interest.
The father of a diplomat and a lawyer, George proudly lists their accomplishments and remembers that he has taken everyone in the family to his home county of Arada, in Ovar, Portugal. “We leave Portugal”, he declares, “but Portugal doesn’t leave you.” -
21 / 50Maria Lobão at home, November 23, 2021
Maria Lobão was born in Graciosa in 1940. Her husband arrived in Lowell in 1969, having Maria and their two children joined him in 1972, together with twenty other family members on the same airplane.
Maria’s parents did not allow her to study beyond elementary school. Widowed at 35, three years after arriving in Lowell, she found herself alone with the children, then aged 11 and 7.
She did “piece work” for Hathaway Shirts and Solomon. Maria then worked for 29 years in a dress factory, and later made wedding gowns for a Portuguese-owned store. “They were very hard times,” she says, remembering how she had to rely on neighbors for aid, but “I think I did a good job. I raised them and had a life”. Her son is an architect and her mother stayed with her until she passed away. Maria’s sister did not fare well in Lowell and returned to the Azores.
Maria enjoys watching Portuguese television to keep up with the news from the archipelago. She never re-married. -
22 / 50Manuel (Manny) Silva in the Portuguese American Civic League (“The Reds”), November 23, 2021
Manny Silva was born on the island of Graciosa, on March 22, 1960. He arrived in the U.S. seven years later and graduated from Lowell High School.
For 25 years he worked for RCA, a government defense contractor that made parts for missiles and airplanes, and the M110 sniper system.
In 1988 he became President of the Portuguese American Center, “The Blues”, and in 1989 was named Vice-President of the Portuguese American Civic League, “The Reds,” which he has managed since 2008. More than once he assembled Benfica (Portugal’s most celebrated soccer club) fans and flew with them over to Europe for important Champion’s League matches. -
23 / 50Alvarina Braga at Home, November 4, 2021
Alvarina Braga was born in Graciosa, in 1939, coming to Lowell with her parents in 1956 at the age of 16. Every time she saw a plane go by she would say: “One day I’m going to America on one of those planes.” Alvarina’s grandparents emigrated in 1885 and her mother, Charlotte, was born in Lowell in 1906, having returned to Graciosa when she was 16.
Alvarina began work at the same place as her parents, a record player cover factory. She then worked at Hathaway Shirts, a flannel pajama factory, Raytheon and Wang Computers. In 1958 she married Daniel Braga, also from Graciosa, who was a tuna fisherman in California when they met. They had three children: Daniel, Lisa and Donna. Alvarina was widowed at the age of 82.
Alvarina, along with two other women, was the first to make and sell malassadas to raise funds for St. Anthony’s Church. She and her husband visited prison inmates as part of a church ministry. Daniel was on the board of the Holy Ghost Society, where she also served as a volunteer. “Nobody ever did anything on their own,” she says. -
24 / 50Isabella and Maria Luísa in Valentina’s Portuguese Market, November 18, 2021
Isabella and Maria Luísa, here aged 10 years and 10 months old, are Glauce Cristiane da Silva’s daughters.
Glauce, who was born in Rondônia, Brazil, works at Valentina’s Portuguese Market. She rises at 3AM every day to begin her other job, and must often bring her children with her to work.
Thankfully, Maria Arsenault, the Market’s owner, is very understanding of her circumstances, welcomes the children in her store and often carries Maria Luísa with her as she attends to business and enjoys the patron’s responses.
The result of this caring is a greater sense of community and respect for everyone’s aspirations and toil. With the money she has made, Glauce has already bought a plot of land back home in Brazil. -
25 / 50Academy Bowling Lanes, Haverhill, MA, September 30, 2021
Kenny Buck plays in the Portuguese-American Candle-pin Bowling League, which meets every Thursday.
Kenny’s poise and grace, as he aims for a strike, following through after releasing the ball, are captured on the ceiling by the shadow thrown by my camera’s flash.
As the pins are reset and all the lanes turn quiet, team members and their families exchange easy banter before bidding each other goodnight and returning to their parked cars. I look back at the lane and wonder how long the shadow will linger now that Kenny is gone. -
26 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, October 3, 2021
Members of the Portuguese American Road Riders and family assemble to celebrate the motorcycle club’s anniversary. Every year they hold a Charity Run for a family in the community experiencing a health-related financial challenge.
The evening is a buoyant one, with spirits riding high amid proudly displayed allegiances, winged birds of prey and clustered, colored balloons.
A fortnight ago, I rode to New Hampshire with some of the members on Pete Soares’s loaned Road Glide, thundering over dipping blacktop backroads and rolling sunlit valleys to look at the changing of the leaves, and had mused at my own misconceptions regarding grown men in leather. -
27 / 50Valentina’s Portuguese Market, 886 Central Street, November 18, 2021
Doppelganger. At least that was the word that played on my lips as I looked at the aisles inside Valentina’s Portuguese Market, opposite St. Anthony’s Church.
A shop with shelves of identical items displayed identically as those in Portugal.
German folklore suggests seeing your doppelganger means that death will follow, but I thought that a mean thing to tell Maria Arsenault, the Market’s owner and presence extraordinaire, especially given her tenacious rebuilding after the 2012 fire that gutted the neighborhood icon. -
28 / 50Ramalho’s Boxing Gym, 900 Lawrence Street, November 23, 2021
Known as the “Home of Champions”, Arthur Ramalho’s boxing gym has been a staple of East Coast Boxing. Over more than five decades, it has been a place where, in the words of Lowell police officers Mike Miles and Mickey O’Keefe – He “changed the lives of so many kids.”
The most famous, by unanimous decision, were Micky Ward and his brother, Dicky Eklund, who were later portrayed in the feature film “The Fighter,” after training at the West End Gym.
Born in 1935, in Lowell, Arthur worked as a cook at the Middlesex County Training School, where he began to train children in boxing. He served as the Director of Contestants for the New England Golden Gloves competition since 1968. Always eager to lend a hand, Mr. Ramalho directed the Lowell Senior Center for many years, after being a major influence in its development. -
29 / 50WKNM studio, 599 Central Street, November 21, 2021
According to the National Weather Service, on the night of February 17, 2018, “Low pressure from the Lower Mississippi Valley moved northeast and passed offshore of Nantucket, bringing snow to much of Southern New England from the evening of the 17th through the morning of the 18th.”
The AM radio antenna above 599 Central Street, from where WKNM was broadcast over 1570 kHz by Luís and Natália Melo, snapped in two and the airwaves have been silent since.
Going through the motions, they showed me how the studio instruments are very much up and running and reminisced about the service they provided to the community, and how it is still missed. -
30 / 50The Portuguese American Center, 59 Charles Street, November 12, 2021
Gerson, aged 11, was born in Terceira, Portugal, and attends Butler Middle School. He, his sister Jessica, 20, and Xavier, 11, are taking lessons together at the Holy Ghost Band music school in the Portuguese American Center, known as “The Blues”.
Gerson attends free classes taught by Aaron Nickles. He likes to play bullfighting music and other songs from Portugal but doesn’t know their names.
That day, João Reis, a longstanding band horn player and music school member who had presented “The Blues” with its first Holy Ghost silver crown, was nowhere to be seen, nor was his inseparable companion Mário, the dog. -
31 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, October 16, 2021
The annual Noite da Graciosa Gala Dinner that took place at The Holy Ghost Society was made possible by the tireless toil of a volunteer group headed by Rui Vasconcelos, first from left in the photograph of the assembled organizing committee.
Entering the venue, I was awestruck by the perfection and labor put into every detail of the decoration and food plating. But nothing had prepared me for the audacious scarlet shirts worn by the committee, whose male members further asserted their sense of place and pride with a white necktie embroidered with the iconic Graciosa Island windmill.
Teresa C. Ornelas, a scion in the community (standing fourth from left), accosted me as I entered the space. She let me know, with equal measures of concern and impatience, that a Marshall’s store, where I would find a proper replacement for my black denim trousers, was nearby. -
32 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, October 3, 2021
Devan Demelo, son of David Demelo, performing with his father for the Portuguese American Road Riders (PARR) Anniversary dinner at the Holy Ghost Society.
Not only is Devan a burgeoning musician, he is also a dedicated motorcyclist who rides a 1999 Honda Shadow Ace VT750.
His pleasure is visible and an unequivocal testimony to his doubly compounded affection and promise. -
33 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, October 17, 2021
Dancing at the Noite da Graciosa Gala at the Holy Ghost Society.
Once the dishes were cleared from the tables decorated in red and centered with posed grape and pineapple arrangements, music began to pour from the stage and chairs were quickly abandoned.
People shuffled and clung, as others sat and watched, gaining momentum for the plunge of no return. -
34 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, May 28, 2023
Performance by Ivânia Pires, one of FADOalado’s five voices.
Elizabeth Cândido, the Holy Ghost celebrations president for 2023, had kept the best surprise for last.
She gleefully introduced the Terceira Island band to raucous applause from the congregated, seated crowd at the Holy Ghost luncheon at the Holy Ghost Society. -
35 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, October 17, 2021
Dancing at the Noite da Graciosa Gala Dinner at the Holy Ghost Society.
The child held his mother’s hands as she led him across the dance floor and between the clasping couples. He looked at me and, in his eyes I saw hard questions that come with age and for which answers are shy and scarce.
I took the picture. I look at the photograph and remember my sixteenth birthday party and my mother in a red dress dancing the night away, enjoying herself like I had never seen her. -
36 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, October 17, 2021
Lee Teles, who works at the Lowell Courthouse, dancing after the meal served by the Noite da Graciosa Gala Dinner, at the Holy Ghost Society.
Donning red shirts and white ties with symbolic windmills, the organizing committee tirelessly fulfilled the evening’s chores with complete abnegation and attention to detail. For many a year the evening’s proceeds have been handed over to a social institution in Graciosa.
The room swirled and swayed with the tone and tempo of memorized melodies and dutiful delight. -
37 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, May 27, 2023
The twenty trays of freshly made rice pudding decorated with stenciled cinnamon upon a table at the Holy Ghost Society are a fitting tribute to the looming celebration of the Divine Holy Ghost.
The arrangement is also a treatise on geometry and how to intersect, overlap and scale circles and rectangles, and relate these to the flatness of the photograph’s surface.
And yet, if one is to prefer confirmation of a spiritual dimension, perhaps nothing is quite so fitting as the still fully-petaled daisies in water, in the single glass vase on the bare wooden tabletop. -
38 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, June 1, 2023
“This is the stuff of miracles,” I thought as I peered into a room adjacent to the stage at the Holy Ghost Society, wondering if the loaves would multiply by next morning.
The moment, 8:44PM, was not a time for waffling or crossing one’s arms for this year’s Santissima Trindade (Holy Trinity) celebration organizers.
I was humbled to see them gift their time and labor to the interminable preparations with gregarious disposition. I posited that the miracles I had been joking about were instead in everyone’s enormous sense of shared community. -
39 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, June 1, 2023
Tables set with the “Pensões para Irmãos” (Pensions for brothers) subscriptions of meat and red wine, during the Holy Trinity celebrations, at the Holy Ghost Society.
Beginning at 5AM, three slaughtered cows were delivered by a Silva’s Mini Market truck to the back of the building and skilled butchers, all Portuguese American, drew out their knives and with effortless skill dismembered and carved the meat.
Tables were laid with perfectly weighed portions and event-labelled bottles of red wine. By 5PM all subscribers had picked up their share, and the banquet hall was re-purposed for the dinner that would follow. -
40 / 50St. Anthony’s Church, June 4, 2023
Iliodoro Anjos is a drummer with the “Foliões” group of revelers that closed the entourage of the Holy Trinity Celebration.
They were preceded by the organizing committee, the current Queens, the saintly icons, and invited dignitaries.
A last musical coda was performed by the “Foliões” followed by singing of the American and Portuguese national anthems before the luncheon was served to almost five hundred guests. -
41 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, June 4, 2023
Liana Silva filialy weathered the procession, the coronations at St. Anthony’s Church and the Holy Trinity festivities at the Holy Ghost Society.
After dinner, as grownups swirled on the dance floor, she joined the other children and indulged in a heady measure of cotton candy.
Dazzled by the replicating specks of pink in her sweater, I was unable to warn her of the approaching peril. -
42 / 50St. Anthony’s Church, October 12, 2021
Maria Gonsalves waved her white handkerchief at the image of Our Lady of Fátima inside the Church of St. Anthony’s on Central Street in a gesture of both farewell and longing.
Every year, between May 13 and October 13 (the period coinciding with the calendar cycle of reported Marian apparitions of 1917), the sculpture is paraded and publicly displayed.
Watching the devotee, I couldn’t help wondering if the ocular relief she donned was a protection for the intensity of the divine light, or light of any source for that matter, or simply the desire to remain unnoticed. -
43 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, June 1, 2023
During the week between the Holy Ghost and the Holy Trinity celebrations, the Rosary was prayed every day at 5PM at the Holy Ghost Society in both Portuguese and English. This Thursday, parents brought their children, and all fared well the five Luminous Mysteries reserved for that day of the week, under Susana Martins’s reassuring guidance.
Listening to the incantation, I remembered a radio interview by Studs Terkel with the tenor who starred in Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha where he confessed to having to count with his fingers, such were the high number of required repetitions, and thought how useful a beaded string could have been.
In the end, as a gesture of appreciation and gratitude for their enduring patience, little one’s were gifted their own colored, plastic rosaries. -
44 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, June 4, 2023
Families gathered at St. Anthony’s Church for the Holy Trinity celebration, a central event in the Catholic faith. The ceremony crowns the newest or youngest members of the congregation, symbolically imbuing them with the Holy Ghost.
Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after Easter Sunday, marks the arrival of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, for whom the celebration is named. The following Sunday, Holy Trinity Sunday, acknowledges the existence of God as three distinct Persons: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
The crowns are always held over the heads of the crowned by a parent or relative, hovering incessantly, even as the priest will present each one with a dovetopped scepter to kiss. -
45 / 50Holy Ghost Society, 65 Village Street, May 28, 2023
Tatiana Cândido, the reigning Queen of Our Lady of Loreto, attended the Holy Ghost celebrations at the Holy Ghost Society, as became all the religiously crowned heads in Lowell’s Azorean community.
Situated in Italy, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, Loreto is home to the Virgin Mary’s house from Nazareth since it was moved there by 13th-century crusaders, and has become the third most important Marian site of worship, following Fátima and Lourdes.
After lunch, Tatiana withdrew and, in a relaxed slouch proper to this generation, beckoned onto her regal palm expressions of both the Profane and the Republic. -
46 / 50Outside the Portuguese American Center, May 28, 2023
Cienna Centeno was crowned Queen of 2023’s Holy Ghost Festivities and was helped into the dress and her royally embroidered cape by fretting, knowledgeable hands.
Standing in the shade outside 59 Charles Street, Cienna waited for the procession to turn right on Central Street and enter St. Anthony’s Church, where the first row of pews awaits her and the Maids of Honor.
The 14-year-old’s collected composure and uncanny aplomb in sporting the contrived outfit merited comments about her predestined fate. -
47 / 50Outside the Portuguese American Center, May 28, 2023
Pedro Cândido is outside the Portuguese American Center on 59 Charles Street from where he will march in the procession to mark the celebration of the Holy Ghost at the Church of St. Anthony.
At this time of day, with the sun riding high, the shade is a welcome respite. The grapes Pedro is holding stand for God’s people and the life they were gifted so that they may practice goodness, just as the owner of the vines is intended to represent God himself.
Surely the young man must dream of sweeter comforts, as he waits in anticipation and some measure of dread for the soon to proceed slow march up the sloping Central Street, than Matthew’s account of the homicidal winegrowers (Matthew 21:37-39). -
48 / 50Elm Street, May 28, 2023
The Holy Ghost Procession is heading to St. Anthony’s Church along Elm Street, before turning left on Chapel Street.
At the front of the marchers, veterans of Portugal’s colonial war in Africa and the April 25th Carnation Revolution carry the Portuguese flag, followed by the Queen and Maids of Honor of São João (Saint John).
Every time the accompanying Holy Ghost Band stopped playing, the cortège halted and reset the distance between the groups. But, occasionally, when turning into side streets, the music would get lost, pauses ignored, and insidious and experimental secession ensued. -
49 / 50Central Street, May 28, 2023
The Holy Ghost procession to St. Anthony’s.Church is underway and proceeding up Central Street.
The celebration’s Queen, Cienna Centeno, and her Maids of Honor are preceded by crown carriers and followed by the organizing committee.
The In & Out Laundromat is brand ambassador for Electrolux washing machines and announces that it is “Where Lowell does their laundry”. The company also proclaims that “Happiness is clean clothes”. -
50 / 50Chapel Street, May 28, 2023
Regal attire marked the solemnity of the event, setting the tone that led the Holy Ghost procession on its elliptical course back to St. Anthony’s Church.
Cienna Centeno, this year’s chosen Queen, relied on her Maids of Honor to keep her cape spread as the splendor of its embroidery by a Californian Azorean proudly proclaimed the heritage that continues to bind the community across generations.
Chapel Street is a quiet street for most of the year, which residents prefer. But exceptions are welcomed when it is graced with the spirit and cadence of the music from the Holy Ghost Band. -
I first visited Lowell in 2021 to teach photography at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. I had not expected to land in a neighborhood with such an extraordinary manifestation of cultural identity. This community was created by people who left their homeland out of need, looking for a better life. Here they have strived to keep their heritage alive.
Over four months, I was offered a first-hand account of what is swept under the carpet in Portugal, my homeland: how life in the Azores and Madeira islands had for centuries provided limited opportunities. For generations, islanders looked west to the Americas, rather than east, to the mainland, for a way forward. Individuals told me of Lowell’s embrace of Portuguese immigrant workers and shared their pride in the part they played in forging America’s industrial might. Families opened their doors to me and pored over picture albums, piecing together stories of struggles and successes.
Back Central became my neighborhood. I lived in a basement where I was visited by a deaf Chihuahua, Lilly Anne. Almost everyone I met either resided there or had done so at some point. For most, growing prosperity meant moving away and traveling some distance to Central Street, but a rose-colored fondness for shared memories remained. The array of organizations and clubs, The Reds and The Blues, the Holy Ghost Society, St. Anthony’s Church, Valentina’s Market, the Agência Internacional Travel Agency, the Portuguese American Road Riders Motorcycle Club, Nana’s Kitchen, all became stations in daily pilgrimages. I remember seeing the police managing traffic for the procession of Our Lady of Loreto the weekend I arrived and feeling unexpectedly proud that the community commanded such respect. Their traditions—my people’s traditions—thrived in the public square.
Taking pictures is my way of making sense of the world around me. As a photographer, I am interested in understanding how things change when I photograph them. Each image returns my presence in time, like a mirror that only I can see, and I can retrace my steps as in a dance routine. Unlike life, photographs give you a second chance. Every time the camera’s viewfinder frames what is in front of me, I am leaving everything else out. I am aware that all pictures are details, insufficient in telling all there is. I am fine with that. When my flash goes off, everyone knows I am there. I am fine with that, too. I need people to accept the light that will transfigure them. We each, in our own way, work together to create a picture. That’s my most precious prize.
When I assemble photographs, I am constructing a story. If I were to choose the pictures again tomorrow, I would probably pick some that had not made yesterday’s cut. This book is a selection of 50 choices. They may be as fallacious or grim to anyone else as they are true to my lived experience amidst an endearingly welcoming population. Just as I photographed in Lowell with no agenda in mind, I chose these photographs for their visual interest and representation of my sense of belonging as I navigated such a graceful community.
These photographs are my homage to the hope, aspirations and achievements of all those who landed on these shores looking for a better life.