Photographer’s Pinoy Power

Nov. 22, 2002

Although known to his friends as someone who captured life in black and white out of artistic obsession, Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado sometimes used his skills to eke out a little extra cash photographing weddings, baptisms, birthday parties and the occasional flophouse brouhaha.

But he didn’t realize he was making the only artistic documentation of his generation.

It’s a wonder that Alvarado, who amassed a collection of 3000 photographs of colorful San Francisco Filipino immigrant life in the 1940s and 1950s never showed his work to his own family. In fact it was his daughter Janet, 41, who accidentally discovered his work when she stumbled over a box of negatives after he died of Leukemia in 1976.

Now the world can see 50 choice selections of his work at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. in a show titled “Through My Father’s Eyes.” A 15-city, three-year national tour will come to Sacramento in September 2003.

Alvarado was born in 1914 and immigrated to California in 1928. He was part of what was known as the Manong generation: single Filipino men who came to the U.S. between 1901 and 1935 after the Spanish American war in 1898 made the Philippines an American territory. Once in America they had to settle for manual labor and face anti-Asian sentiments.

His pictures show the evolution of Filipino immigrants as they emerged from a group of bachelor workers to a family based community. A large number of photos in the archives show the Mexican, Italian, and African American communities Alvarado interacted with everyday. His material spanned from cockfights, farmers, church scenes, shop keepers, soc hops, bawdy night life and Filipino pig roasts.

He put down his 4x5-speed Graphflex in 1959, after journeying to the Philippines to marry Norbetta Magallanes.

“They are so beautiful; you cannot find pictures like this. I was surprised he never showed them to me,” said Mrs. Alvarado, who will turn 83 when the exhibition opens.

Janet Alvarado’s homebound task of sorting through the pictures turned into The Alvarado Project in the late 1990s. At this time she was living with her mother and going back to school at SF State (earning a 1999 bachelors degree in industrial design). She used her contacts at the university to connect with professors, artists and community leaders to start a committee that would help her get grants, do research, and move forward with the project.

Getting funding was frustrating for Alvarado because she said the Filipino community has no organization dedicated to funding the arts while events like Filipino beauty pageants and fashion shows routinely get large cash grants.

That’s pretty amazing considering recent census numbers that say 35,000 Filipinos live in Daly City and 321,000 live in the Bay Area. To find numbers bigger than that, one would have to take a trip to the Pacific Islands.

“I think it’s a tragedy that it was so hard to raise the money. This is our history,” said Alvarado with a plaintive arch in her voice, as she moved another large folder of “Pinoy” photographs onto her lap and looked around at the cluttered garage office where she is buried in prints of her father’s work.

Her work paid off in 1998 when she put on a well attended exhibition at the San Francisco public library. In 1999 she was contacted by a Smithsonian agent who had seen the exhibition and wanted to put it on tour -- but there was no opening until 2002.

“Two years was a piece of cake, I’d waited an entire lifetime,” Alvarado said.

A lifetime ago after the end of World War II, a then 6-year-old Nick Vicerra met Alvarado when the photographer moved into his parent’s three-story Victorian on Pine and Baker in a mixed, predominately black neighborhood. He said he remembers Alvarado as a nice hard working man who had numerous jobs as a houseboy, a dishwasher and later as a cook at the Letterman Army Hospital. Alvarado served in the U.S. Army’s First Filipino Regiment fighting the Japanese.

“Richard would usually pick me up in his green Chevy sedan to go fishing after school. We would go to the Presidio where there used to be piers up on the beach alongside Crissy Field. He photographed me several times when we went fishing and at family Birthday parties and things. At times it was obsessive. It was like an art-form and something he wanted to express himself with. He had built a good amateur’s darkroom in the basement of our house. He had all the equipment he needed all laid out and he could process a whole lot of pictures at the same time. Primarily they were pictures of parties he was hired to photograph. He liked taking pictures and was collecting them,” said Vicerra.

Alvarado’s cramped basement darkroom wasn’t that different from the room where his daughter now organizes his work. She stacks piles of photographs on the floor that didn’t make it into the show, like one of a plump, jolly madam leaning back in a sofa chair providing a glimpse up her dress, and a woman storekeeper standing before a fully stocked shelf of female freshness products.

Then there are the 800 photographs of African American families who lived in his neighborhood and invited him to their parties. Alvarado said this exhibit is unique from other Asian photography exhibits in that it doesn’t just focus on Asians, but captures the entire immigrant experience. Pictures of interracial Filipino and Mexican farmer families prove her point.

Alvarado is driven by a desire to promote Filipino culture. But what motivates her most of all is when she remembers the kindness and generosity of her father who worked hard so she would never be left wanting, and loved her dearly for the short time they were together.

“I’m a daddy’s girl.”