Ricardo Alvarado: Capturing a Cultural Legacy

Ricardo Alvarado: Capturing a Cultural Legacy

In 1928, at the age of fourteen, Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado (1914–76) left his family in the Philippines to start a new life in the United States. Before long, he moved to San Francisco where he lived for nearly fifty years. In 1942, during World War II, he enlisted in the US Army’s 1st Filipino Infantry Regiment. After the war, Alvarado became a cook at the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco’s Presidio. The new position enabled him to purchase a Graflex Speed Graphic camera, commonly used by professional photographers. He spent his free time mastering the large-format camera, which required 4x5-inch sheet film, resulting in high-quality prints that he developed in a small darkroom in his apartment. Alvarado photographed the local, multiethnic communities that surrounded him. Friends and relatives often asked him to shoot celebratory occasions such as weddings, baptisms, and birthdays. He also photographed house parties in the Fillmore and Bayview, his coworkers at the Letterman Army Hospital, and agricultural workers in nearby rural areas. Alvarado’s poignant photographs thoughtfully document these vital communities that might have otherwise never appeared on film. Shortly after marrying in 1959, Alvarado retired his Speed Graphic camera and devoted his life to his wife and two children. When Alvarado died in 1976, he had amassed a tremendous archive of nearly 3,000 negatives and photographs. In 1998, his daughter Janet established The Alvarado Project to ensure the preservation of her father’s unique cultural record of Filipino American life in California. Stanford University Libraries now permanently holds the collection of Alvarado’s work.

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Anita Alfafara, Ethel Canlas, and Luz Incarnacion Vie for the Title of Queen at a Box Social  1950s
Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado (1914–76)
San Francisco
archival pigment print  
Photograph copyright Janet Alvarado
R2024.1501.001