In 1973, a single mother with two small children, I moved to Western Ave. Cambridge, MA. Rent control, space heaters, political activism, shared childcare and potlucks … the six-unit apartment building on a noisy truck route became the center of my life. Shabby Central Square, while a bit threatening, represented diversity, determination, and community in a time of personal and political upheaval.
By 1993, my Western Ave. world had dispersed across America. The children had graduated from high school and college and moved on to new adventures. Married to a man whose own life changes led him to Central Square, in our home off Western Ave., I began a three-year project, documenting the storefronts and people of Central Square. The series has become a marker of two decades of my life in Cambridge and those early years of new found independence.