iBoston AthenæumBeacon Hill
Constantine Manos spent nine months in 1974 photographing Boston's streets for the Bicentennial. Fifty years on, the flea markets, protests and ball games return to the Calderwood Gallery.
A couple sits on the sand at Castle Island in 1974, with school buses behind them. The Globe's Mark Feeney found it "no less unsettling, taken in that particular year, in that particular place": busing had begun that year, and two other shots show flag-carrying demonstrators on City Hall Plaza.
Constantine Manos spent nine months of 1974 photographing the city for the Bicentennial, and 154 of his pictures were enlarged onto a pavilion outside the Prudential in 1975. Here it's 53 black-and-white prints in the first-floor Calderwood Gallery, plus a dozen contact sheets, a 20-image slide show and audio from a dozen people who were in the pictures. You go from the Faneuil Hall flea market to lunchtime at Durgin Park, which closed in 2019, so this is the only lunch there you'll get now.
Feeney called it "deeply human and humane without ever being sentimental or touristy." It's one gallery, included in the $11 ticket, free for members, open until 8pm Monday to Thursday, through 12 December.
Constantine Manos photographed Boston in 1974: a couple and school buses at Castle Island, a flag protester on City Hall Plaza, lunch at Durgin Park. The Boston Globe: "deeply human and humane without ever being sentimental or touristy."
Couple and buses, Castle Island
Look for a couple at ease on the sand with school buses behind them, a picture the Globe found unsettling for being taken in 1974.
Demonstrator at City Hall
A lone protester holds an American flag on City Hall Plaza, with the Custom House Tower looming in the background.
Lunchtime at Durgin Park
A waitress among the lunchtime diners at the Faneuil Hall restaurant, photographed decades before it closed.
The contact sheets
A dozen of the 534 contact sheets from Manos's 19,000 exposures sit in a vitrine, showing the frames around the ones he chose.
The slide machine
A small slide show runs 20 color images, including pictures that hung in the original 1975 pavilion show.
Children 13 and under pay $5 with an adult; visitors 14 and up pay $11.