Images of Immigration Amateur Photographer Captured Filipino Community in í40s, í50s by Heather Nalbone Ricardo Alvarado started taking pictures to pass the time. A Filipino immigrant and bachelor until the age of 45, Alvarado dedicated much of his free time to a camera. It wasnít until 1959ó31 years after he first came to the United Statesóthat he exchanged photography for a Filipino wife he met through letters. Alvarado filled a basement trunk with nearly 3,000 negatives and photos by the time he started a family, but it wasnít until after his death and years of working as a low-wage cook that his daughter discovered the trove and turned it into a traveling exhibit. ìThrough My Fatherís Eyes,î now on display at the National Museum of American History, has become an unintended portrait of San Franciscoís immigrant community during an era when racial prejudice was prominent and miscegenation laws still ruled. ìFor a long time, they were the forgotten immigrants,î said Daisy Pee, herself a modern Filipino immigrant and volunteer at the Smithsonian museum. ìThis is one of the efforts to represent Filipinos as part of the American tapestry.î Although the images are sharp and imag inative, their subjects are not extraordinary. Farmers, shopkeepers, families and children are portrayed in everyday environments. The photographs are rich with daily rituals and celebrations that bound members of the Filipino culture to one another and to other ethnic communities. Although their work days were long and their career opportunities limited, little of the hardships so often equated with immigrant life in the 1940s and 1950s are evident in the photographs. They are instead filled with dances, parties, picnics, weddings and baptisms. Children posing in front of a barren cornfield don hair bows and matching sweaters. Even in candid shots, few of the hard-worked grocers, housemen and army cooks are caught without a smile in the middle of a work day. Large family gatherings and celebrations help paint a picture of the pride and familial commitment characteristic of San Franciscoís immigrant community. There are no portraits of individual people on display. All photographs focus on groups of family, friends or co-workers. Smiling teenagers engage in Filipino dance and young men prepare for cock fights, evidencing the way younger generations embraced the cultural traditions blended by interracial marriages among Asian and Latino immigrants. Most of all, the exhibit offers a time warp through an artist whose works sat untouched for decades. The hardworking man known in life as a janitor, houseman, army medical technician, father and cook today offers a pictorial documentary on one of modern Americaís most influential and rapidly growing cultures. Through The Alvarado Project, a nonprofit initiative started by the photographerís daughter, the photographs will travel to 15 cities in several states, including California, Nebraska and Florida, following their debut in Washington. ìThrough My Fatherís Eyesî runs through March 31 at the National Museum of American History, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW. For more information, please call (202)-357-2700 or visit www.americanhistory.si.edu. Heather Nalbone is a freelance writer in Silver Spring, Md.