Forty years ago, a young Sacramento photographer disillusioned with city life moved into a cafe-turned-apartment on Main Street in Locke.

As the only Caucasian in the tiny Sacramento River Delta town, James Motlow was eyed with suspicion by his Chinese neighbors – until two years into his stay, when Mrs. Jone Ho Leong asked him to fix her toilet.

The friendship that blossomed between Motlow and the elderly woman gave him entrée into the tightly knit Chinese community.

He had photographed residents working in their gardens or out and about on Locke's two streets, but never was able to shoot portraits until Mrs. Leong posed for him on her front porch. After that, others in town paused to face his camera.

A few years later, Motlow donated 48 black-and-white photographs of Locke and its people to San Francisco's Chinese Culture Center, which organized an exhibit that toured the United States in the late 1970s. The photographs have been boxed up in a San Francisco basement ever since, and largely forgotten.

"Locke: A Photographic Exhibition of a Chinese Community in the Sacramento River Delta" finally made it to Locke on Saturday, in time for the 2011 Asian Pacific Spring Festival. It should be there for many years to come.

The exhibit is on long-term loan to the Locke Foundation, and Clarence Chu, who owns much of Locke's commercial property, gave it a home in the Jan Ying Association building, 13947 Main St.

By mid-June, after protective museum-style boxes are constructed for the photos, the little museum will be open for self-tours a few days a week.

"I'm thrilled that the photographs are here. In fact, I become a little emotional, because this was an important time in my life and in the life of Locke," said Motlow, 62, who left town in 1979 and moved back last year. "I was privileged to be here and know these people."

The photographs measure about 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches, and many bear labels in English and Mandarin. They provide a snapshot of the town in a different era:

There is Chow Bing Fai sitting in his boardinghouse room on Main Street in 1976. Mr. Suen, his back curved like a quarter-moon, waters plants with a topless tea kettle. Three Chinese women burn leaves on Key Street in the fall of 1974. And Wong Buck proudly shows off three enormous wintermelons loaded onto a wheelbarrow.

Some images in the exhibit appeared in "Bitter Melon: Inside America's Last Rural Chinese Town," a 1987 book Motlow co-authored with Jeff Gillenkirk.

Most of Motlow's subjects were elderly in the 1970s, but Wayne Chan was 10 when his family posed for the photographer. In the Chan family portrait, young Wayne has a point-and-shoot camera up to his face, aimed at the photographer.

"Oh, there's my sister. She passed away," Chan said Saturday, looking at a photograph he hadn't seen before. "And there's my sister-in-law and my father. I still live in that house. It still looks the same."

He remembered the day that Motlow piled a bunch of Locke kids into his Volkswagen and drove them to Sacramento to see their first movie.

"I've been dreaming about this for a long time," Motlow said of finally bringing the photo exhibition home to Locke. "The place they should be is in this town."

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