by KIKE CALVO
An exploration of cultural memory, migration, and the traditions that travel with us.
On July 8, 2018, I was photographing a celebration along 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens. There were Mexican masked dancers, Colombian artists, elaborate costumes, music, and people proudly sharing traditions rooted in places far beyond New York City.
Among the many moments I photographed that day was a portrait of four young parade queens wearing tiaras and ceremonial sashes. They stood together holding Latin American flags, surrounded by the energy of the Feria de las Flores.
I could not have known that this photograph would later become part of a Smithsonian exhibition exploring Latino identity in the United States.
Yet the story behind the image begins long before its appearance in a museum.
The World Within a Neighborhood
My fascination with ethnography has accompanied me throughout my career as a photographer and explorer. I have always been interested in the ways people maintain connections to their origins through language, ritual, clothing, dance, and the stories passed from one generation to the next.
That curiosity has taken me to Indigenous territories, traditional ceremonies, remote islands, and communities across the world.
But cultural exploration does not always require traveling thousands of miles.
Sometimes, it begins by walking through a neighborhood.
Jackson Heights has long fascinated me because of the extraordinary diversity concentrated within its streets. Different languages, religious traditions, immigrant histories, businesses, and cultural expressions exist in close proximity, creating a constantly evolving urban landscape.
Over the years, I have photographed its architecture, everyday encounters, celebrations, and people. This growing body of work has become a long-term documentary project and the foundation for a photography book currently in development.
The celebration I photographed in July 2018 became one particularly colorful chapter in that archive.
When Traditions Cross Borders
Among the performers were Chinelos, masked dancers associated especially with Morelos, Mexico.
The tradition has historical roots in Carnival and is often interpreted through its relationship with colonial authority and social satire. Elaborate costumes, embroidered tunics, high feathered hats, and distinctive masks create a striking visual spectacle.
Yet these garments represent far more than decoration. They reflect generations of craftsmanship, collective celebration, and cultural memory.
I also photographed participants representing the Tecuanes dance traditions of Puebla.
These performances tell stories involving communities confronting a dangerous feline, often called a tigre in traditional narratives and associated with the jaguar. Specific versions vary among communities and performing groups.
One of the dancers I documented belonged to Los Tecuanes de San Gabriel. At the time, he had been living in Brooklyn for eighteen years.
I found this detail particularly meaningful.
Here was a person who had built a life in New York while continuing to participate in a tradition connected to his Mexican heritage.
Migration changes the setting in which traditions are practiced. But it does not necessarily diminish their importance. In many cases, communities actively sustain and reinterpret these cultural expressions in their new surroundings.
The celebration also brought together artistic traditions from Colombia.
Among the people I photographed was designer Dayra Benavides, whose work with Joyas Blandas is connected to the creative world of the Carnaval de Negros y Blancos in Pasto.
Her presence offered another example of how a local New York celebration could become a meeting place for artistic and cultural histories from different parts of Latin America.
Four Young Women and the Meaning of Belonging
Photo © Kike Calvo
During the celebration, I photographed four young women wearing crowns and sashes identifying them with the Queens Hispanic Parade.
They held flags representing countries including Ecuador, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
The photograph was later cataloged under the title Feria de las Flores in New York.
For me, the image represents a particular expression of belonging: young people publicly celebrating cultural connections that extend across national borders.
A flag can represent a birthplace, family heritage, shared memory, or an emotional attachment to a place that a person may know through the stories of parents and grandparents.
Photographs cannot reveal every dimension of those relationships.
They can, however, preserve the moments in which people choose to express them.
This is one of the reasons I am drawn to documentary photography.
A single image may record a gesture, a face, or a celebration. Over time, that image can become a point of reference for understanding how communities represented themselves at a particular moment in history.
From Queens to the Smithsonian
Years after I made the photograph, Feria de las Flores in New York appeared in ¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States, the inaugural exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Molina Family Latino Gallery, inside the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
The exhibition, presented from June 18, 2022, to July 20, 2025, explored Latino experiences and contributions to the history of the United States.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino also included the photograph in its digital educational materials discussing Latino identity.
There, the image accompanies a simple but meaningful question:
How do you celebrate your Latino identity?
That question connects closely with the ideas that have guided much of my photographic work.
Identity is rarely reducible to a single national origin or cultural tradition. It can encompass languages, histories, family experiences, geographic connections, memories, and personal choices.
The Smithsonian’s use of the photograph placed one moment from Jackson Heights within a much larger conversation about those layered identities.
It was meaningful to see a photograph from my neighborhood documentation presented in that context.
Photography as a Record of Living Culture
One of the challenges of photographing cultural traditions is resisting the temptation to present them as something fixed in the past.
Traditions are lived by people in the present. They are practiced, adapted, debated, taught, and sometimes transformed.
The Chinelos dancers performing in Queens were not simply recreating a distant historical scene. Nor were the Tecuanes performers merely presenting costumes from another country.
They were participating in cultural practices that continue to hold meaning within their communities.
Understanding the people behind those traditions is as important as photographing the traditions themselves.
That conviction has shaped my interest in visual anthropology and my broader work documenting cultural heritage, ceremonies, and everyday life.
It also informs my approach to Jackson Heights.
I want the photographs to reveal not only what a neighborhood looks like, but something of the people, histories, and connections that give it character.
An Archive Still Growing
The photograph featured by the Smithsonian is only one image from an extensive collection I have been building in Jackson Heights.
The larger archive includes cultural celebrations, street scenes, architecture, portraits, and observations of the changing urban environment.
I continue to see this work as an exploration of cultural diversity and the ways communities establish belonging in a place far from their ancestral homelands.
There is something extraordinary about the fact that one photograph from a neighborhood festival can enter a national museum’s interpretation of American history.
But there is also something equally extraordinary about the neighborhood itself.
For anyone curious about cultures, traditions, migration, and human experience, Jackson Heights offers a reminder that exploration can begin remarkably close to home.
Sometimes, the world is waiting just around the corner.
Photograph and Museum Record
Original photograph: Feria de las Flores in New York
Photographer: Kike Calvo
Photographed: July 8, 2018
Location: Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City
Museum credit: Kike Calvo / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Exhibition: ¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States
Institution: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino / Molina Family Latino Gallery
Further Reading and Sources
Smithsonian — Feria de las Flores in New York
Smithsonian — Exhibition history
Artnet — Independent coverage documenting exhibition inclusion
Mexico’s INAH — The Chinelos tradition
Mexican cultural archive — Los Tecuanes in Puebla and the State of Mexico
Part of The Living Atlas of Exploration™ — documenting places, people, cultural traditions, and the histories connecting them.
