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Mike Caudill/Driven PR This Pro Lite Unlimited race truck is powered by a 347-cubic-inch Ford V-8.

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. – Casey Currie drummed in one message last Friday during our laps around the track at Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park: “Slow! Slow down! Slow into the turn!” Currie, 29, who has motorcycles and Baja 1000 trucks, had good reason to worry.

After he had first showed me around the five-turn, about 1.1-mile course, we switched places. Now I had the wheel of this beastly Pro Lite Unlimited truck, a two-seat demonstrator that was otherwise comparable to single-seat entries in the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, which competed here over the weekend.

Naturally, I envisioned soaring over the jumps, touching down on all four wheels and pitching sideways into each turn, where I would find the cushion on lightly packed dirt and shoot forward for the next suborbital launch.

But Currie communicated a healthy respect for the truck’s potency, its 2,800-pound mass, and its willingness to roll over if mishandled. He also stressed that the highly technical business of flying over jumps shouldn’t invite a cavalier attitude, lest we land on our chins or tailbones.

In fact, just before I had strapped into the driver’s seat and hooked my helmet to the truck’s intercom system, another driver in a 300-horsepower truck had gone end-over-end. Fortunately, he appeared to be uninjured after the wreck.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR Casey Currie, 29, was a little nervous about a journalist’s relative lack of experience behind the wheel of a racing truck.

For a reporter to get behind the wheel was unprecedented, so why was he letting me drive the truck? “I’m not sure,” he said, hardly able to hide his skepticism. “Have you ever driven on a track?”

My naming some big ones didn’t seem to allay his concerns about my ability. The fact is that he was stuck with a writer almost twice his age behind the wheel; the recent accident had clearly upset him.

While he was still strapped in, I nudged onto the track. As soon as the engine had fired up, normal conversation became impossible, but through the speakers inside my helmet Currie told me everything that could go wrong.

The truck’s lack of a windshield allowed me to see, ever so clearly, how imposing the jump hills looked. Rattling around in the back of my brain was a speech  that Rich Unferdorfer, the racing series fire safety director, had given at the drivers’ meeting. Flame-retardant socks were strongly encouraged, he had said.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR Ronald Ahrens, the author of this post, gets some wheel time.

Meanwhile, even though I’d bitten into my right cheek on a jump during Currie’s demonstration lap, I felt relaxed and comfortable in the racing seat. Cozied up to my right knee, throwing off a fair amount of heat through its sheet metal covering, the throbbing 347-cubic-inch Ford V-8 begged to go racing.

Reviewers of new cars might talk about instantaneous response, but boldly shooting forward in this rig required just one more red blood cell in my big toe. Everything about the truck reflected its intent to extend the driver’s reflexes. The steering had eye-blink directness. The tread of the big tires offered plenty of bite. And without 4-wheel drive, the truck’s rear-end wanted to swivel right around so we could power-slide through the corners.

“These ruts could make us roll over,” Currie said, breathing shallowly, as we entered a turn. “Are you braking?”

We seemed to be crawling, and I’d hardly touched the brakes on the first lap.

“Use the brakes,” he said.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR One of the turns at the Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park in California.

Noticing the white flag waving, he expressed astonishment that we had been granted a third lap (and then another, which seemed almost endless, for a wholly unneeded cool-down).

I turned off the track, docile to the last. At least I hadn’t lost control and ruined someone’s day.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR Ronald Ahrens drives a racing truck at the Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park in California.

Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press Liberace with a 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I, which he used in a Radio City Music Hall show in 1985.

“Behind the Candelabra,” the new HBO movie about Liberace, has a scene in which he drives up to his Hollywood home (it’s actually Zsa Zsa Gabor’s home, but that’s another story.) in a Mercedes-Benz 450SL, and arrayed around the driveway is a collection of cars as flamboyant as the entertainer.

Claudette Barius/HBO Michael Douglas, left, and Matt Damon in the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra,” directed by Steven Soderbergh.

The movie, making its debut this weekend and starring Michael Douglas as Liberace, is billed as a look into Liberace’s private life and loves, so it is no surprise that considerable screen time is given to the man’s cars. Jerry Goldberg, the marketing director of the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, said in a 2010 interview that over the years Liberace had owned at least 30 cars before he died in 1987.

For decades, the museum, which closed to the public in 2010, had a more or less permanent display of seven of his favorite vehicles. These included a gold metal-flake, customized 1972 Bradley GT that Liberace drove in Palm Springs, Calif., where he lived. There was also a 1957 taxicab from England; it still had a working meter that registered pounds, shillings and pence. The museum’s display noted that Liberace loved picking up guests in it and turning on the meter.

His “Bicentennial Rolls-Royce,” a 1954 model that was painted in patriotic red, white and blue. For a 1976 performance he wore an outfit, including hot pants, that matched the car and piano. Matching cars, costumes and pianos were a recurring Liberace theme, as familiar in his act as his signature tune, “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

One of Liberace’s more valuable cars was a 1962 Rolls-Royce Phantom V Landau with a retractable top. He had it covered in a mosaic of jewel-like mirrors, with patterns of prancing horses. It has been described as “a disco ball on wheels.”

Liberace’s collection also included a certain amount of schlock, of questionable value. One of his favorites was a replica of a 1931 Ford Model A; Liberace used it as a stage prop.

There is also a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible that Liberace commissioned George Barris, the customizer, to turn into a mini Rolls-Royce. The resulting mirror-encrusted creation was lathered in hot pink paint and had the license plate “VWRR JR.”

Of course, there is also the so-called Rhinestone Roadster, a sort of kit-car creation adorned with faux gemstones that matched a stage costume and the piano that was used in his 1986 performance at Radio City Music Hall.

That car, by the way, was on display in New York last week, along with other Liberace memorabilia, in conjunction with the movie’s premiere. The Liberace Foundation still controls many of the museum’s artifacts (although some have been sold).

His favorite car? Mr. Goldberg, the Liberace museum’s marketing director, said it was a 1954 Cadillac Eldorado presented to him by his old television show’s sponsor, Citizens National Bank.

But what was Liberace’s first car? Mr. Goldberg said Liberace’s first car, which he couldn’t afford to buy until he was already 30 years old, was a red 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 convertible.

Why that car? Though Olds clearly had a winner with the new 88 and Liberace loved the color red, why an Olds 88?

Eighty-eight matches the number of keys on a piano.

Nathan Laliberte Jameson Willoughby, a copy machine repair technician from Northern Virginia, eating a Philly cheesesteak on the rear deck of his Lotus Elise.

Last Saturday, I rode shotgun in an all-black BMW M3. Behind the wheel was Andrew Pollock, 26, an engineer from New Jersey, who had allowed me to be his co-pilot for the fourth annual Euro Philly Cheesesteak Run, a road rally that culminated at Tony Luke’s Cheesesteaks in South Philadelphia.

The 40-mile journey began in the parking lot of a Dick’s Sporting Goods in New Jersey. Mr. Pollock, in khaki shorts and a graphic T-shirt, let his left hand dangle loosely over the top of the steering wheel while his right deftly toggled the shift knob. Upon arriving at Tony Luke’s, which is by an I-95 overpass, Mr. Pollock said it would be best to buy a cheesesteak before looking at the hundreds of cool cars in the parking lot. “Better hit up the line now, otherwise you’ll be waiting for hours,” he said.

Tony Luke’s serves what is widely regarded as one of the best cheesesteak sandwiches in town. As is typical at cheesesteak restaurants in Philadelphia, customers must order in a Philly dialect. “Whiz wit” means you want a cheesesteak slathered in Cheez Wiz and topped with diced onions; “whiz widdout” means you want Cheez Whiz but not the onions; provolone is “provi”; peppers are “peps.”

Nathan Laliberte Andrew Pollock’s black BMW was one of the entrants in this year’s Euro Philly Cheesesteak Run.

After ordering a cheesesteak whiz-wit and a mug of Mountain Dew (when in Philly …), I went to the parking lot where participants were eating on their car trunks. The lot was filled with European tuner cars – I counted 120 in total. I talked with several owners about top speeds and 0-60 times. Jameson Willoughby, a copy machine repair technician from northern Virginia (“In five years, I’ve only encountered one copier I couldn’t fix”), huddled over the spoiler of his 2005 Lotus Elise, eating a cheesesteak with peps and whiz.

“The guys at work think I am getting paid too much,” he said, as we discussed the performance specs of his Lotus. “What they don’t know is that I also deliver pizzas at night to support the car habit.”

One man, holding his 6-month-old daughter, said he had recently bought a Recaro baby seat for his customized Audi S4. “She already loves cars,” he said.

Nathan Laliberte About 120 European sports cars showed up for the fourth annual cheesesteak rally last weekend.

A man standing beside a late model Porsche 911 said he had recently beat a Ferrari off the line. “I took the rev-limiter chip out, and now I can smoke just about anything.”

His 9-year-old son, wearing a blue T-shirt with a Porsche logo, was standing next to his father. I asked the boy if he had enjoyed the rally. He smiled and made sweeping motions on his belly and said, “Cheesesteaks! Cheesesteaks!”

Twitter Part of the Twitter battle between Elon Musk and Chrysler over which American company paid off its federal loans first.

The Twitter messages are once again flying from Tesla Motors.

In a Wednesday announcement, the Palo Alto, Calif., automaker said it had paid off the entire loan made to the company by the Energy Department — and added that it was “the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.”

Within hours, Gualberto Ranieri, a senior vice president at Chrysler, responded on Chrysler’s blog: “The information is unmistakably incorrect. It’s pretty well-known that almost exactly two years ago – May 24, 2011 – Chrysler Group LLC repaid (in full and with interest) U.S. and Canadian government loans more than six years ahead of time.” Chrysler also responded via Twitter.

“Not so fast, Tesla,” says @chrysler comm chief, re claims it’s first to repay U.S. govt. @teslamotorsbit.ly/14zB6sJ #shortciruit

— Chrysler (@Chrysler) May 23, 2013

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and a Twitter regular, responded, saying: “As many have already noted, @Chrysler is a division of Fiat, an Italian company. We specifically said first *US* company.” And later, he added: “More importantly, @Chrysler failed to pay back $1.38B. Apart those 2 points you were totally 1st.”

Tim Rue/Bloomberg News Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk (pictured) maintains that Chrysler, which is mostly owned by Fiat SpA, is no longer an American company.

Mr. Musk’s second Twitter message is in reference to a portion of Chrysler’s TARP loan that was assigned to the old Chrysler when the United States government sold its stake in the newly organized Chrysler Group LLC to Fiat SpA. Of the $12.5 billion the government had loaned the old Chrysler, approximately $1.3 billion was left behind. On June 2, 2011, the United States Treasury said in a statement that it was “unlikely to recover the difference of $1.3 billion owed by Old Chrysler.”

Asked to respond to Mr. Musk’s contention that Chrysler Group LLC is not an American company, Mr. Ranieri, in a telephone interview, said: “I don’t have any response to that. Chrysler Group LLC is the company of Walter Chrysler, and it speaks for itself for what it does.”

When asked if he could expand on that, Mr. Ranieri added, “I love espresso ristretto, so I don’t have anything more to add.”

Luke Macgregor/Reuters Women laid flowers on Thursday at the scene of the London murder.

LONDON — The questions being raised on Thursday after the brutal killing of an off-duty soldier on a London street echoed many of the questions raised after the Boston marathon bombing just five weeks before. Were the suspects “lone wolves” or part of a wider conspiracy? Were they radicalized Islamists or disaffected locals? Were they motivated by events overseas or mouthing the rhetoric of someone else’s fight?

Two suspects were hospitalized under guard after being shot by police officers in the denouement of Wednesday’s attack in the Woolwich district, which was captured by bystanders on their cellphones. (The Lede blog links to the video).

After the unnamed soldier was hacked to death, one of the suspects told a 48-year-old woman who tried to reason with him, “We want to start a war in London tonight.”

One counterterrorism expert suggested to Britain’s ITV that the suspects could have been aping the April 15 marathon bombings in Boston .

“It may be that this is a copycat after the Boston bombings,” said Richard Barrett, a former coordinator for the United Nations Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team. “That two individuals could cause a lot of mayhem is maybe more of an inspiration than attacking soldiers.”

As in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, the suspected authors of the Boston attack, investigators want to determine whether the Woolwich killers were acting alone or whether they took their orders from a terrorist group.

And, if they were “lone wolves,” how far had they been indoctrinated by purveyors of extremist Islamist philosophy?

The Telegraph said Wednesday’s attack was “straight out of Al Qaeda’s terror manual.”

Tom Whitehead, the newspaper’s security reporter, said Britain faced a new generation of Islamic extremists who were virtually impossible to detect.

“They are self-starting fanatics who have radicalized themselves over the Internet and while many may be inspired by Al Qaeda they do not need any command or control from the terror group,” he wrote.

The suspects have yet to be identified. Both were black and the one who addressed bystanders — and can be seen in the videos and tabloid front pages that have spread around the world — spoke with a London accent.

That raised the possibility that, as in the case of the Americanized Tsarnaev brothers, the attack was the work of disaffected homegrown killers rather than foreign terrorist plotters.

It would not be a first for Britain. Four bombers who killed 52 people in attacks on the London transport system on July 7, 2005, were all British-born.

Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” who is serving a life sentence in the United States for a failed 2001 attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic passenger flight, was a Londoner who went to high school in the same borough where Wednesday’s killing took place.

In 2007, investigators foiled a plot by a Birmingham man who wanted to emulate jihadists in Iraq by beheading a soldier on camera before circulating the film online.

As Muslim organizations joined politicians in denouncing the killing, Mayor Boris Johnson of London told the BBC that neither Islam nor British foreign policy was to blame. The crime was the responsibility of “the warped and deluded mindset of the people who did it.”

If the perpetrators wanted to provoke a race or religious war by their unprovoked attack in a multicultural corner of London, all they have started so far is a lackluster skirmish.

A hundred or so supporters of the far-right English Defense League clashed with police after rallying at a Woolwich pub but were soon dispersed. Nick Raynsford, the local member of Parliament, said they should “go home and grow up.”

Otherwise Londoners appeared to be following the “keep calm and carry on” injunction from politicians, who praised the coolheadedness of bystanders at Wednesday’s attack.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday, “One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives.”

The Times’s Sean Patrick Farrell talks to foreign graduate students studying technology at the University of California, Berkeley, about the jobs they will be starting after they graduate and their lives in the United States as immigration reform looks to be gaining momentum. One Chinese student tells Sean that if she cannot get visas to stay in the U.S. — currently required each year — then she will go home to Shanghai and probably start her own business there.

Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama spoke at the National Defense University.

NEWS President Barack Obama on Thursday said he would impose a higher standard on the use of drone strikes, and he sought to renew his effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Peter Baker reports from Washington.

European Union officials, having won concessions from the bloc members Luxembourg and Austria over banking rules, are expected to turn their focus to Switzerland. Raphael Minder reports from Geneva.

Benjamin Girette/Associated Press With a “Save the university” sign, academics in Paris on Wednesday protested a proposal that more courses be taught in English.

The reaction was loud, swift and fierce this week to a proposed law that would require French universities to teach more of their courses in English, a measure that a well-known scholar had called a “suicidal project” that would lead to France’s sacrificing its language to “Americanization disguised as globalization.” Maïa de la Baume reports from Paris.

With the European economy reeling from austerity and joblessness, the European Union took time last week to focus on something rather smaller in scale: it approved a measure that would ban restaurants from serving olive oil in cruets or dipping bowls. On Thursday, the European Commission announced in a hastily called news conference that the measure, meant to take effect on Jan. 1, would be rescinded. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

Aung Shine Oo for The New York Times Local aficionados are encouraging the authorities in Myanmar to restore George Orwell’s house.

In the town where George Orwell wrote his first novel, “Burmese Days,” a group of locals are encouraging the authorities to restore his house and its unkempt garden. Jane Perlez reports from Katha, Myanmar.

ARTS By Thursday afternoon at the Cannes film festival, the battle lines had been firmly drawn and the Palme d’Or hypothetically awarded. The winner, amateur prognosticators huddling in the festival headquarters confidently or cautiously predicted, surely would be “Inside Llewyn Davis” or “The Great Beauty” or “Blue Is the Warmest Color” or “Nebraska.” Never mind that it was only Day 9 and that the actual awards don’t take place until Sunday evening. Manohla Dargis writes from Cannes.

SPORTS Mahesh Bhupathi, the 38-year-old Indian doubles star with a strong head for business, believes Asia is underserved by high-level tennis. And though it might seem that the last thing that tennis needs is another event, on Friday in Paris he and his partners plan to introduce to the public the International Premier Tennis League, with the intention of starting play in late 2014. Christopher Clarey reports from Paris.

Andrew Testa for The New York Times Tony Britten, the composer of “Champions League.”

The Champions League anthem, an operatic choral piece that is one of the most recognizable songs in sports, was composed by Tony Britten to “class up” the soccer league. Two decades later, it is everywhere. Sam Borden writes from London.

Jessica Hromas/Getty Images The Dutch artist Florentijin Hofman’s giant rubber duck in Victoria Harbor.

Here is the art-related news that the average Hong Kong resident cared about most this week: The giant rubber duck has been revived.

Billionaire collectors may have arrived for the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong, the Swiss fair’s first entry into Asia. Thousands of Champagne corks may have been popped as galleries and celebrities hold art-themed galas.

But Picasso sales and V.I.P. lounges feel a world away for many of the city’s seven million residents, who were mostly concerned about the fate of “Spreading Joy Around the World,” a k a “Rubber Duck,” by the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. The six-story-high version of the childhood bathtub favorite was set adrift in the harbor early this month, in anticipation of what is unofficially known as Hong Kong Art Week. While the annual art fair anchors the festivities, it is also the time of year that the city puts on its best cultural works and events.

Several large-scale inflatable art pieces have shown up in public spaces, reflecting a side of Hong Kong — irreverent, eccentric, critical — that might not come across in the fair’s more buttoned-up environs.

Thousands gathered around the waterfront when “Rubber Duck” made its debut May 2. Since then, countless duck-themed products have shown up at shops and restaurants. Teenagers are wearing rubber-duck outfits, and tourist kiosks are selling rubber-duck postcards. Its smiling face was even seen at the Cheung Chau bun festival, a 200-year-old tradition on an outlying island.

The South China Morning Post, the main English-language broadsheet, has published no fewer than 19 articles, opinion pieces and blog posts about it. One editorial, “Giant Rubber Duck Has United the City,” argued that it did more to inspire Hong Kongers than a recent government drive to raise morale.

Netizens had a ball using its smiling visage for political commentary. “The P.L.A.’s greatest nightmare,” one wrote under an image of the duck looming above over other vessels, referring to unpopular government plans to rezone a strip of a newly reclaimed waterfront for military use and to hand it to the People’s Liberation Army. (Initially, the public thought it was going to be used for a park or promenade).

Tyrone Siu/Reuters The beginning of the end for “Rubber Duck.”

Then on May 15, to the horror of the crowds, “Rubber Duck” listed, fell on its beak and slowly capsized before deflating into a bright yellow puddle. The Standard, another Hong Kong newspaper, described the public’s response as “disconsolate.”

The duck’s demise reflected the city’s every anxiety: One blogger pondered if it had succumbed to lung disease from the Pearl River Delta’s infamous air pollution. Images of the duck, wearing one of the face masks made ubiquitous here after the 2003 SARS virus crisis, proliferated online. Others wondered if it died from the newest deadly strain of avian flu found in China, which University of Hong Kong researchers have discovered can be both airborne and transmitted to pigs, as reported in Science.

Rumors that it was killed by mainland Chinese tourists — both welcomed for their spending power and criticized for some of their manners — were so prevalent that CCTV, the state broadcaster, felt the need to issue a denial:

There have been rumors that Hong Kong’s big yellow duck was “burned to death” by tourists from Shenyang, who had thrown 30 lit cigarette butts at it. Today Hong Kong has confirmed that the damage was not man-made. Organizers are doing a routine physical examination.

Vincent Yu/Associated Press Crowds gathered on a walkway, left, to watch the “Rubber Duck” rescue mission. Its deflation came to symbolize everything wrong in Hong Kong.

But on Tuesday evening, the day before the Art Basel opening — arguably the largest art event in the city’s recent history — a re-inflated “Rubber Duck” made a resounding comeback as hundreds cheered from the sidelines.

Despite all the efforts of Art Basel and the local government, it took an art installation — organized by a local shopping mall — to capture people’s imaginations.

Scanpix Sweden/Reuters Firemen extinguish a row of burning cars in the suburb of Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm, on May 23. Youths have been rioting all week.

LONDON — Is Sweden’s version of the Scandinavian social model broken?

Five straight nights of rioting in the suburbs of Stockholm have dented the country’s international image as a haven of tolerance, prosperity and tranquility.

As the unrest spread from the outlying district of Husby, where it was apparently set off on Sunday by the fatal police shooting of a local man wielding a knife, gangs of youths have torched schools and other public buildings and set alight scores of cars.

The rioting, for which the authorities have sought to blame a small group of troublemakers, has been focused in areas with a majority population of poor immigrants and asylum-seekers.

“I’ve seen in the international media that this is a riot between young people in some parts of Stockholm and the society,” Erik Ullenhag, Sweden’s integration minister, said. “But this is not true. It’s a small proportion.”

Sweden, like its Scandinavian neighbors, is proud of a social model based on cooperative labor relations and a cradle-to-grave welfare system that is credited with having pushed it to the top of international tables of life expectancy, education and standard of living.

The Swedes, with their own currency, have escaped the worst consequences of the euro zone crisis that has afflicted some of their European Union partners.

Only this week, a Swedish government Web site boasted that Sweden wanted to export a welfare model that appeared to have “stood the test of time.”

One expression of Sweden’s tolerant outlook has been the welcome extended to immigrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence in countries like Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria. Around one in seven of its almost 10 million people are now foreign-born.

But many newcomers have been pushed to the margins, reliant on low-paying menial jobs and often concentrated in poor suburbs like Husby.

Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for those born in Sweden.

The policies of the center-right government of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt have been credited with supporting economic growth. But a regimen of lower taxes and reduced state benefits has also been blamed for an unprecedented rise in income inequality.

A report published last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed income equality had plummeted in recent years, challenging the government’s boast that the country has become almost a single-class society.

Discontent, particularly among young people, has now manifested itself in some of the largest-ever street disturbances in Sweden.

As in the widespread youth riots in Britain in 2011, the trouble has not been confined to the immigrant population. The rioters were a “mixture of every kind of people,” according to Kjell Lindgren, the Stockholm police spokesman.

The anti-immigrant Sweden Democratic Party, which has risen to third in opinion polls ahead of a general election due next year, blamed the riots on “irresponsible” immigration policy.

For its part, the government’s left-wing critics have blamed the erosion of the country’s social welfare model for the unrest, with the opposition Left Party saying “cuts, reduced future opportunities, segregation and stigmatization” were at the root of the riots.

Gérald Bloncourt Gérald Bloncourt’s photograph of a Portuguese girl in a slum outside Paris in 1969.

PARIS — The seven-year-old in the black-and-white photograph bit shyly on her finger, concealing a slight smile.  Maria da Conceição Tina Melhorado looked at her long and hard.

“I knew it was me,” Ms. Melhorado, 54, said, recalling her first encounter with the image in 2010, when a friend called her about it. “But the date in the caption was off by a year, so I had some doubt.”

While she embarked on a mission to confirm her theory, Ms. Melhorado quickly learned that the photo wasn’t just part of some obscure archive that existed deep in Internet space. It was an advertisement for an art exhibition in Portugal.  She discovered that she was, quite literally, the poster child for Portuguese immigration to France.

“Obviously, I was shocked,” Ms. Melhorado said with a brief laugh. “I didn’t know what to think.”

Today, that picture is part of “Pour une Vie Meilleure” (For a Better Life), a collection of photographs dedicated to the Portuguese migration to France in the 1960s and ’70s. The images, on display at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in the 12^th arrondissement, belong to Gérald Bloncourt, a Haitian photojournalist who spent 20 years working, photographing and walking with Portuguese immigrants as they made their way north.

Both populations benefited from the migration, which peaked between 1969 and 1971 with the arrival of more than 350,000 immigrants. France needed cheap labor as it continued to recover from World War II, while the Portuguese who left sought to escape a poor economy and an oppressive dictatorship, and to avoid military service.

And throughout that time, Mr. Bloncourt followed Portuguese émigrés on foot, documenting their struggles.

“I was protesting against poverty,” Mr. Bloncourt said at the show’s opening last week (it runs through July 31). “I wanted to use my photos as a weapon in hopes to change the world.”

Ms. Melhorado’s father left for France in 1962 in hopes of finding higher wages. Two years later, she and the rest of her family walked from their hometown, Vila Nova de Foz Côa in northern Portugal, to Paris, where they reunited and resettled in St. Denis.

Gérald Bloncourt A roadside haircut in Champigny-sur-Marne, near Paris, in May 1964.

From roadside haircuts to mud-covered slums, Mr. Bloncourt’s images capture one of the first and largest waves of immigration to France. Besides serving as a comprehensive historical record, the photos shed light on a group that, according to some, has been overlooked.

“This is a forgotten immigrant population,” said Caroline Brettell, a professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas who spent a year between the two countries studying the movement. “It was completely different from the sort of politics of race and whatever else is going on in France today with the larger Muslim populations.”

One reason why they are overlooked, Professor Brettell said, is because their transition was relatively seamless; linguistic similarities and a shared Roman-Catholic background helped to forge bonds between the two groups.

Another factor in the forgetting of that immigration story is that the immigrants themselves chose not to tell it.

“I was ashamed,” Ms. Melhorado said, motioning to the shantytown depicted in the photograph. “I didn’t want my children and my co-workers to see that this is where I was from, that this is where I lived.”

But Mr. Bloncourt’s work left her no choice. During a lesson on immigration in school, her son’s teacher shared some photos with the class, including one of her.

“I asked him how he felt when his classmates found out the little girl in the picture was his mother,” Mrs. Melhorado recounted. “He said ‘proud.’ ”

“That’s when I realized how important it is for our story to be told, and when any feelings of shame I had turned to pride.”