Pictures worth a thousand words: Immigrants learning English speak through a photo exhibit at the Narrows

FALL RIVER – What does Fall River look like?

It’s a question that might make certain landmarks come to mind. Battleship Cove. The Braga Bridge. The Lizzie Borden House.

For Johani Artache, Fall River looks like the lamppost she walks past when bringing her daughter to school. Adorned with decorative balloons and triangular pennants, the lamppost became one of the first local landmarks Artache came to know upon moving to the United States.

“She liked this so much, she wanted to take a photo of it,” explained her young son, Joseany. “She said she took the photo because, when my sister was small she liked balloons a lot.”

The reason Artache’s son spoke on her behalf is because she is still learning English. She, along with more than 30 other recent immigrants, all participated in a photography exhibition called “Through Our Eyes” that was organized by Southeastern Massachusetts SER-Jobs for Progress and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The photographers all have limited English fluency, as they are all students in SER-Jobs’ ESL programs, but the exhibit was intended as an outlet for them to communicate through other means.

“It’s in the tradition of photo voice, where you give cameras to people who don’t have a voice,” explained UMass anthropology professor Andrea Klimt, who pitched the idea to SER-Jobs. “Photography is a very accessible medium and the idea was even if you don’t have full command of the English language there are stories you can still tell.”

Over the course of the last year, the program’s students were each lent a camera and sent out to document Fall River as they see it.

Almost all of the students had no serious photography experience and ESL teacher Cristina Raposo said they first approached the project with some uncertainty.

“Initially, they didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “As it evolved, they became more and more curious and interested in the project. We started sharing their shots in class and they were seeing what others were bringing in. They were proud.”

Each photographer’s favorite images taken during the last year were put on display at the Narrows Center for the Arts on Saturday in honor of SER-Jobs’ 40th anniversary. The gallery drew a steady crowd of local officials and residents curious to see the work on display.

Some spent their time admiring the familiar images of sunsets and boats resting on Mount Hope Bay, but others were drawn more to the imagery they weren’t expecting.

New Bedford resident Deborah Roher said she was particularly interested in seeing depictions of seemingly ordinary things from a new point of view.

“There are some that are just photos of things like infrastructure, but it’s so interesting to see them displayed like this,” she said.

That new perspective, SER-Jobs Executive Director Maria Ferreira-Bedard explained, was what the exhibit’s organizers had been hoping for.

“We thought it was very important to re-envision the community through their eyes,” she said. “We’re all a little jaded because we’ve been here a long time, but they’re fresh. They chose to come here to start a new life and we want to see what’s important to them, what’s beautiful to them.”

Email Peter Jasinski at pjasinski@heraldnews.com.