Up and down Broad Street

96° Fahrenheit, 64% humidity, nothing but sun

DEAR EXPOSEUR—Cait described my birthday present this year as a Philly sandwich: a series of short adventures, bookended by daytrips to Philadelphia. In between, a stop in Bethesda to watch Andrew Bird play with the National Philharmonic, and a few days in NYC.

For this second Philadelphia trip, I arrived at 30th Street Station at 7:30 a.m. Thursday morning, and transferred to the SEPTA regional to Center City, where I walked the squares and parks around City Hall while I waited for the world to wake up. My goal, more or less, was to photograph a series of vacant industrial buildings near the North Philadelphia Amtrak station, scouted on my ride home from New York the weekend prior. With that in mind, I started up Broad Street on foot, and as the sun rose higher, I ducked underground to the SEPTA when I needed air conditioning and rest.

The day was furiously hot. The pavement baked the soles of my feet through my boots, and the glare of the sun bore through my sunglasses. By noon, I couldn’t tell the sweat from the water I’d been pouring on myself to keep cool. Still, the air was pleasantly rich with the scent of gardenia and linden and honeysuckle.

The heat made progress slow. After a brief ride on an un-air conditioned train and a stop for coffee and donuts at the aptly named Coffee, Cream, and Dreams in Spring Garden, I found myself suddenly more aware of and intrigued by my fellow sufferers — these people making the most of a hot day in the shade of brick houses, bus shelters, and overgrown alleys. All were kind, and yet possessed of the sweet brusqueness I’ve come to admire in Philadelphians.

New York is a barrage on the senses, which I mean as a compliment; there is more to photograph on any block than a week of walking could exhaust. And Baltimore is a city of neighbors — Smalltimore, affectionately — and I have photographed it for so long and know it so closely that the work often becomes a kind of rephotography, because whatever place I stop to photograph is a place I have likely stopped at before, and the new photograph cannot help being a record of what has happened since the last time I photographed it.

Philadelphia gives something of both at once. It is big enough that I can still get lost in it, and yet when I stop to photograph someone, the encounter is unlike New York, where the whole exchange — the ask, the picture, the thank-you — happens in an instant before people move on to their business, for New Yorkers are busy people in a busy city; in Philadelphia, people stood with me in the heat for ten minutes or more, regaling me with the lineage of their families, who was still left on the block, where the corner store used to stand, and which alley contained potential subjects, as if a stranger with a camera were exactly the thing they had been waiting for.

I sloshed back to the train hall just before sundown. While I waited for my train, the Philadelphia folk artist and homeless activist Irving Fields drew my portrait. Today, he sketches people in various public settings around the city, but for the many years he spent unhoused, he drew shoppers at the grocery store for something to eat. For a long stretch you could find him at Pat's, in South Philadelphia, drawing people over their cheesesteaks. We talked while he worked. What he told me about why he draws is close to what I would say about why I photograph. He goes looking for people he finds beautiful, possessed of an innate magnetism manifested in indescribable, imperceptible terms; a nervous moving of the hands in idle moments, or a far-off look in the eyes as they move through the day, or the routine confidence of anonymity on a busy street.

It's the happiest I've ever looked in a portrait, drawn or otherwise, so I bought it as a thank-you for Cait, who knew the best gift she could give me was a few days to wander off alone. After a week commemorating the first half of my life, I do indeed feel pretty happy.

mw

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P.S., I hope you’ll tune in on Wednesday, June 17, at 11:00 a.m. EDT, when I’m joined by NYC photographer and chronicler Angela Cappetta. We’ll talk street photography, photo books, talking to strangers, and more.

Save the date: Thursday, June 18, at 5:30 p.m. EDT is the next Baltimore Photo Book Meet-Up at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Hope to see you there.