Staff photo / Andy Gray Youngstown artist Tony Nicholas talks about the process of picking the subjects and photographing them for his project “This Is Youngstown,” which will be on display through Feb. 1, 2026, at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s Tyler History Center.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning Valley has a strong multicultural heritage from the different ethnic groups that immigrated here, lured by the promise of steady work in the steel mills and other industries decades ago.

Artist and photographer Tony Nicholas documents the local Hispanic community in the exhibition “This Is Youngstown,” which opens today at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s Tyler History Center.

The idea came about when Nicholas was wrapping up his project “Rust Belt Artists: Portraits from the Mahoning Valley,” which was shown at Trumbull Art Gallery in Warren in 2023, and he was looking for a new subject.

“I was like, ‘What’s next?,'” Nicholas said. “My daughter was graduating from high school, from Chaney, and I was taking pictures of her and her girlfriends, her crew that she grew up with. It never dawned on me until I was taking pictures of them a month before they graduated — my daughter is the only white girl. They’re all Hispanic from everywhere. And I’m like, ‘That’s the project.’ I have 100 friends who are all Puerto Rican or something. And I was a big fan of some other artists’ work who were Hispanic. It just seemed like that’s what I needed to do next.”

Nicholas has photographed more than 60 subjects so far, and the project is ongoing. About 40 black and white portraits are on display in the exhibition, and a television monitor in the gallery includes some of the other subjects and outtakes from the sessions.

A show at the Tyler History Center was part of the idea almost from conception. One of the first people he contacted was H. William Lawson, MVHS executive director.

“That was the deal that I pitched them when I first started this two-and-a-half years ago,” Nicholas said. “If you guys, in some form, sponsor it, help me make it a show, I’ll give the work to you to keep in your collection. Bill didn’t even blink. I sent him an email, a little proposal, and we met the very next day. It was off and running.”

Nicholas, who teaches art at Youngstown State University, started with friends. More often than not, those friends would suggest other people he needed to photograph.

There were a couple of people who declined his request in the past year, as immigration became more of a flashpoint politically, but some who initially were apprehensive or felt unworthy of the attention were persuaded when they learned it would be part of the MVHS’s permanent collection.

“When I’d tell them it’s tied to this place, their eyes opened up. I said, ‘This is going to be a part of their collection. They’ll have a record of you being here at this point in history.’ People would soften right away.”

Some people he photographed at their homes. Others in their workplace. Most are single portraits, but a couple of sessions turned into family reunions with multiple generations in a single image.

It provided some unexpected benefits.

“I got fed so many times,” he said. “Ana Torres (co-director and head of library services and operations at Youngstown State University) put out a spread for me of so many things, and it was great. It felt like, ‘We’re different, but we’re not so different.’ That’s what my grandparents would do — ‘Come, sit down. Eat before you do anything.’ I got invited to a Peruvian Independence Day party on the North Side of Youngstown, and there were 50 people there … I was just going to take pictures, and they’re like, ‘No, no, you have to eat first.’ It was great.”

Despite an exhibition that will run until Feb. 1, 2026, Nicholas views “This Is Youngstown” as an ongoing project

“I kept thinking, why hasn’t this been done before? And now I really have to keep doing it. There were times when there was a lull and I couldn’t get someone to sit down and photograph them or I’d be busy and a month or two would go by and I wouldn’t photograph anyone. I’d be like, ‘You gotta keep doing this, because this feels important.’ If anything I’ve done up to now is important, this seems a little bit above that.”