The International Institute of New England (IINE) has served immigrants in Lowell since 1918. So it was a perfect partnership when we placed a poster in their Jackson St. lobby in which both the subject and photographer were immigrants.
From the beginning, IINE talked about translating Poster #23 into Haitian creole to connect with one of their largest constituencies. They placed the translation on a sheet of paper next to the poster.
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In this video, Guervens Ricardo Jean Jacques, community services case specialist, reads the translated text from the poster of Azorian Curina Mello as taken by English Annie Powell:
In the Appleton Mills spinning room in approximately 1908, two immigrant women, one a mill girl, the other a photographer, probably spoke through hand gestures and an interpreter. That collaboration resulted in an image that today is a visual anthem of Lowell's history of textiles and immigration.
Curina, then in her late teens, had recently arrived with her family from the Azores. She worked 56 hours per week in brutal conditions. Annie, in her late 40s, was separated from her husband and trying to earn a living as a photographer. That day, she sold postcard images to Curina and her fellow workers to send back home to their families in Portugal.
In 2021, the Chasing Annie Powell project began with a close examination of this portrait of Curina. Through our research, we discovered the name of the once uncredited photographer, Annie Powell.
Annie migrated from West Yorkshire to Lowell, Massachusetts in 1891. Her accent was difficult to understand and her subject, Curina, did not speak English at all. Yet they both transcended the noise of the machinery to make an iconic portrait. Later in the darkroom, Annie retouched the image so that the story it would tell back home was filled with promise and light.
Poster #23 in our 100 Posters Project is in the lobby of International Institute of New England, 101 Jackson St., Suite 2, Lowell.
Bernie Zelitch is founder and executive director of by Annie Powell charitable nonprofit. Formerly an investigative journalist, he is a songwriter, historian, and member of the Photographic Historical Society of New England board of directors.
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How deeply moving, particularly given these contentious, challenging times!