Where’s Boston? 50 Years Later: The Athenaeum’s reflection on a city

By the Editorial Team · Sunday, June 21, 2026

Constantine Manos is being honored with a new exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum, showcasing 53 of his black-and-white photographs from the iconic 1970s “Where’s Boston?” multimedia installation. The exhibit highlights Manos’s influential role in capturing Boston’s cultural identity and offers historical context through additional images and contact sheets, connecting past artistic heritage to the city’s present.

Constantine Manos, a South Carolina-born photographer who became a significant figure in Boston’s cultural scene after moving to the South End in the 1960s, is being honored in a new exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum. The show, titled “Where’s Boston? 50 Years Later,” reflects on the legacy of the original 1970s multimedia installation “Where’s Boston?”, for which Manos provided a major photographic contribution.

The original installation, presented from 1975 to 1978 at the Prudential Center, was Boston’s official artistic contribution to the United States Bicentennial celebrations. Designed by the CambridgeSeven architectural firm, the exhibit featured 40 projectors displaying 3,100 slides alongside quadraphonic sound, offering a dynamic visual and auditory exploration of contemporary Boston. At the time, the installation was a major cultural attraction, comparable to popular spots like Quincy Market and Steve’s Ice Cream in Somerville.

Manos, who had joined the prestigious Magnum Photos cooperative in 1963, had his work prominently displayed on the pavilion’s exterior, where 154 of his photographs were enlarged to about four by six feet, creating an evocative visual declaration of the city. Other notable contributors included Boston photographers Lou Jones, Jerry Berndt, and Susan Meiselas before her rise to wider fame.

The current exhibition focuses on 53 of Manos’s black-and-white photographs, considerably smaller in dimension, mostly eight by 12 or 11 by 14 inches. These images represent a selection from a vast body of work generated over nine months in 1974, during which Manos captured some 19,000 exposures resulting in 534 contact sheets. Several of these contact sheets are also on display.

In addition to Manos’s photographs, the exhibit includes two color photos of the original pavilion taken by Steve Rosenthal, as well as a mini-slide show featuring 20 color images spanning Manos’s broader career. These subjects range from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Mardi Gras festival to locations such as Greece, Florida, and Southern California, and include a significant 1993 protest in Washington, D.C., where the AIDS Memorial Quilt was prominently featured.

Meanwhile, at Leica Gallery Boston, a separate exhibition titled “Sal Lopes: Living with AIDS” runs through August 9. Lopes’ show presents 28 black-and-white photographs taken between 1988 and 1993, documenting the AIDS crisis through images of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a Boston couple who adopted a child with AIDS, and members of the Buddy program organized by the AIDS Action Committee. Lopes will deliver a talk and book signing at the gallery on June 27.

The Boston Athenaeum’s “Imagined Nation” exhibition commemorating the country’s 250th anniversary continues in its “Community and Place” rotation through the summer, with a final themed rotation focused on “Citizenship and Democracy” scheduled for August through mid-November.

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