philly

These are the leads I've found on various news sites around the way within 45 minutes of the end of Obama's first State of the Union address.

NYT: "With his legislative agenda stalled and unemployment stuck in double-digits, President Obama used his first formal State of the Union address Wednesday night to outline his efforts to rebuild a "tested" nation and put more Americans to work."

LAT: "Every Borscht Belt comedian knows that it is best to leave an audience with a zinger that will always be remembered. President Obama, in his best speeches on race and on winning the presidency, did that."

WaPo: "President Obama delivered an urgent plea for unity on Wednesday night during his first State of the Union address, seeking to recapture the energy that propelled him into office — and reverse his party's trajectory on the heels of recent setbacks."

AP: "Declaring "I don't quit,'" an embattled President Barack Obama vowed in his first State of the Union address Wednesday night to make job growth his topmost priority and urged a divided Congress to boost the still-ailing economy with fresh stimulus spending. Defiant despite stinging setbacks, he said he would not abandon ambitious plans for longer-term fixes to health care, energy, education and more."

Chicago Tribune: "President Barack Obama, vowing a new commitment to fiscal restraint while renewing his bid for an overhaul of healthcare, called on Americans Wednesday night to repair "a deficit of trust." "

The Guardian UK: "Barack Obama bowed to public anger against his presidency by using his first state of the union speech to address many of the concerns of voters and to make creation of more than a million jobs the overwhelming priority for the coming year."

WSJ: "President Barack Obama, seeking to recapture the promise of change the propelled him to the White House, returned to his pledges to remake Washington after a bruising first year that saw his approval ratings drop and his ambitious agenda founder."

Times Online UK: "President Obama defied expectations and mounting evidence of disarray in his own Government to declare in his first annual speech to the joint houses of Congress last night that "our union is strong"."

via iconjohn.

Kate and I headed out for some grub at our favorite Mexican spot in the city, Taqueria la Veracruzana 2 weeks ago and were walking back to Center City when we wanted a little sweet something to end the night with. As we walked through the Italian Market, I suggested Chapterhouse Cafe over at 9/Bainbridge (by the way, a MySpace page isn't the best landing page for your business – a basic webpage isn't too hard to put up and keep up, you can even link to the MySpace page for the updates!). Neither of us had ever been there and it's close by to where we've lived for the last 5 years. I'm not a coffee drinker so I don't drop into the many coffee shops around town too much. We walked into the spot, which I've walked by a hundred times, and was greeted by Jessica, the coffee shop brindled pooch. We became buddies.

Our nightcap was a big cup of hot chocolate. We were in there late so, unfortunately, they had run out of whipped cream. Oh well. The hot chocolates came out a little bit on the lukewarm side, but they were tasty.

It's a cool space inside. A row of stools facing back out to 9th St; a middle room, where we sat, with couches, tables, board games and stuff to read.

It's quiet enough to do some studying as one Temple Law school student was doing a couple tables over from us.

Here's Kate sitting in a funky hanging chair thingy outfitted with some IKEA pillows – how do I know they're IKEA? We have one of them, heh.

We settled into a game of Sorry! which neither of us had played in many moons. We just started playing without reading the (simple) directions. A few turns into the game and we realized both of us had forgotten how to play it, but we went on. I read a few of the rules as we played. Kate won the first round – which wasn't a true round since we were just making shit up while we played. I won the rematch – where we played by the rules – so I'm claiming true victory for the night!

What Yelpers have to say about Chapterhouse. Bigger pictures here.

The February 2010 issue of GRID Magazine is now out (official release party at The Abbaye, January 18th 5p – 8p). You can read it online or pick up a print edition somewhere around town (Metropolitan Bakery, Old City Coffee, Fair Food Farmstand…) I took a bunch of photos for 3 different stories. Here are the shots that made it into the book.

Here's a shot of the main dining room of Green Eggs Cafe, 1306 Dickinson Street, in South Philly.

And a shot from the outside of the newly finished space.

Feast Your Eyes Catering has moved from Northern Liberties to Kenzo and now they have a solar array on the roof and a huge event space on the second floor of a former barrel factory.

Here's Lena Helen, founder of the Kensington Community Food Co-Op outside her home in Kenzo. The physical Co-Op is still in the planning stages, but a facility has been decided upon and the membership rolls are filling in nicely.

Here's a shot of the interior of the always stocked to the gills Weaver's Way Co-Op in Mt. Airy; Philly's largest Co-Op.

Another shot of the first floor of Weaver's Way.

A shot of the second floor at Weaver's Way.

The entryway of Weaver's Way. I wanted a different shot, but there was a gigantic delivery truck to my left so I had to make do.

Here's a slideshow of some of the shots that I liked that didn't make it into the stories:

A few shots from my family's Christmas last month. Here's my niece Emily as she's jumping on the chair screaming to have her photo taken. "Take a picture of me!" She later, as per usual, got angry at me for too many shutter clicks "You're taking too many pictures!" Can't please everybody all the time.

Here's my nephew Justin rocking some 3D glasses I got from Kate's family the first time I met them 7 years ago. I had the glasses on my old desk at my parents' house. In the background is our 25 year or so old plastic tree in bokeh.

Here's my nephew Dylan smudging his thumb on my sister's camera lens. Oh I have much to teach him.

Here's my 98 year old grandmother and my dad, her son in law. She knit that sweater vest for him. 98 and still rocking it.

Some more shots from the visit back to NY:

• Learn how to do a wall flip
• Start a photo magazine
• Start interviewing people for NYT 1 in 8M type videos
• On the street photoshoots with strangers
• Travel
• Drink more scotch
• Finally visit my friend Mike in Nashville, TN
• Perform wall flips at parties and randomly on the street
• Shoot more film again

Just some shit I want to do in the next few years.

I have a few images in last month's edition of Grid Magazine. Portraits on pages 16, 17, 18 of

George Hummel of Home Sweet Homebrew

Craig Rosenfield of Loop and Spool

And an old shot of my friend and jarring/canning expert Marisa McClellan of FoodinJars.com.

More shots coming in the January issue which should be out shortly (I hope to post more frequently and in a more timely fashion this year!).

Last month, I took a trip over to check out the new Weave Bridge at UPenn with my friend Andi. She had seen the bridge from I-76 and I had seen my friend Chris's shot over the summer and finally got to see it myself. The bridge was created by Cecil Balmond, UPenn's Paul Philippe Cret Practice Professor of Architecture in the Master of Architecture graduate program, and Arup's Advanced Geometry Unit. The view above is looking SE from the western side of the bridge.

How to get to the bridge, head over to Franklin Field on 33rd St south of Walnut St. Walk along the South St side of the stadium and follow it as it curves to the left and you'll see the bridge across the train tracks. To get to it, you'll have to go over a smaller footbridge over the SEPTA tracks and then walk under the CSX tracks to what's left of Bower Field (totally torn up for redevelopment by Penn) and up the ramp to the bridge.

Here's the view back towards Center City from the Penn side of the bridge. Some more info on the bridge and the structure for the geeks out there.

Stepping onto the bridge, it feels sturdy, but very skeletal. I stomped on the I-beam on the floor and I could feel the whole thing reverberate beneath me. It's impressive to look at up close and it puts a smile on your face to walk inside of it. Amtrak trains pass by every few minutes and don't cause too much of a tremor at all. This section of Penn's campus is going to be quite a sight in a few years.

I laid (lay?) on my back with my widest 20mm f/3.5, sucking in my stomach to get as much of the bridge into the frame. It's a gorgeous structure. After getting home, I realized I failed to take an adequate photo of the outside of the bridge with Franklin Field in the background. Ugh. I'll head back one of these days.

Some more shots in this flickr set.

Above are some of my favorite photos I've taken in Philly from 2009. I traveled to NYC a few times and had some shots I really liked, but this set doesn't include them. There are definitely also some shots that I didn't upload from various shoots I did for clients, but this is a good sampling of the film and digital I shot over the year. To view larger on flickr, click here.

I wish I had done this in years past. To new traditions.

I went to The Met on the Friday after Thanksgiving before heading back to Philly. I didn't partake in the Black Friday madness so I wasn't up at 3a and I got to enter The Met right as it opened. I was free to roam most of the museum before the rush, but as you can see from the photo above, there were still 100+ there waiting to get in at open, 9.30a, along with me.

My primary reason for going was to see a special exhibition of Robert Frank's The Americans called Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans. My friend Tony graciously got me a copy of the Steidl 50th anniversary edition hardcover of the book for my birthday last year. The production was overseen by Frank himself selecting the paper, overseeing the cropping (if any) of all images and personally overseeing and approving each sheet of the final proofs in Germany in 2007. Bad ass. This is one of those seminal works in all the field of photography and I'm indebted to Tony for the lovely gift.

The Met's exhibition (which runs through January 3rd) features all 83 images, in sequence, from the book. As you walked to the entrance of the exhibit, you were greeted by 8×10 – 11×14 images from works previous to The Americans. In front of the open doorway to the photos were a couple 12' tall scanned images of some of Frank's contact sheets which went into the making of The Americans. He went through 767 rolls of film over 2 years as he criss-crossed the country making photos. You really get a look at the thought process when you look at a person's contact sheets. I think it would be cool to see the 'contact sheets' of today's digital photogs. You can see when a master like Frank drastically underexposes images in sequence every once in awhile; it makes you not feel too bad for muffing one here and there. Maybe he adjusted the shutter speed dial of his Leica M3 or aperture dial of one of his lenses. Regardless, the mistakes were corrected the next frame.

One of my favorite images from the show is not from the book. It's his image titled City of London, 1951 (above). He went to London to photograph the bankers. You can feel the man in a top hat at the bottom left walking right through you. The morning (or evening? or midday?) fog in the distance of the alleyway. A woman across the street walking briskly in a fur coat. The strong vanishing lines of the sidewalks, windowsills and people running to the distance from right to left. The flash of bright white of the banker's crisp shirt in sharp contrast to the muddy grey of the rest of the image. His whole silhouette draws your eye. Shot at 50mm, Frank must have been close.

The book was a project Frank started after receiving a Guggenheim grant with the help of friend (and my photographic idol) Walker Evans in 1955. The actual grant application was under glass in the first room of the exhibition. His goal was:

To photograph freely, throughout the United States, using the miniature camera exclusively. The making of a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present. This project is essentially the visual study of a civilization and will include caption notes; but it is only partially a documentary in nature: one of the aims is more artistic than the word documentary implies. Applicant elaborates this matter in separate accompanying statement of plans.

On another informational placard it noted that Frank created 1000 work prints and laid them out all over his house while culling to the final 83. Hundreds of work prints were up on a wall to see the selection process. Different colored pencils/markers/pens were used to cull and crop. It was noted on a placard, I believe by the curator of the show, that Frank's original captions are subtle, forcing an intellectual reading of the images. None are obvious, but not wholly metaphorical, but a detail of the event as a whole. For example…

In this photo titled: Rodeo, NYC 1954 [#65 in sequence], you see a man, a cowboy in the middle of NYC. A Dodge pickuptruck with a bed cover (pre Leed!) in the background. A lovely curve through the brim of the 10-gallon hat atop the plaid-laden cowboy. Below the fist-sized buckle are some pre-hipster slim fit, 5-pocket, dungarees slipping into well-worn, almost-to-the-knee stitched boots. He's dipping his head down to stick a freshly rolled cig into his mouth with his right hand and a left hand, adorned with a simple wedding band, is surely about to follow with the clink of a Zippo. Leaned up against a familiar wire mesh NYC trashcan, this cowboy is nowhere near a rodeo as we know it, but that might not be where this cowboy's mind is at.

There were dozens of contact sheets in the middle of each room which I thought was a nice use of space. Instead of blocking off the rooms into smaller spaces for walls to hang photos, the glass cases housed the process behind the book. You can see the 1-3 frame sequences as they came to fruition. For the most part, never more than 3 frames dedicated to any single subject. He shot freely. He shot confidently. He shot for himself and not for deadline nor art director. He didn't have to spend rolls of film on a single subject, aiming to get it right for someone else. He knew what he wanted, he shot it how he wanted and he moved on feeding his hungry eye.

I could also check out the film stock Frank shot in 1955-1956 with the contact sheets laid out for all to see. Kodak's Tri-X, Super XX, Plus X as well as Ilford Hypersensitive were 4 of the ones I noticed. Judging from what I've read and saw in the photos, he was shooting primarily 50mm with some 90mm and a little wider than 50mm.

In His photo 'Barber shop through screen door – McClellanville, SC' [#38 in sequence] he literally peers into a barbershop through a screen door 40 miles northeast along the Atlantic from Charleston. In Frank's shade, you can see into the barbershop, but around his silhouette you see the reflection of the suburban houses across the street through the dappled sunlight of the heavily shaded sidewalks laden with tall, old trees. A lone, empty barber's chair. A shelf full of hair tonics. Frank is saying to the viewer "through my eyes, under my guidance, I present the world."

I thoroughly enjoyed my hour peering at Frank's images. It's always great to see images under glass in a museum in large format. The images were between 8×10 and 16×20. If you're in NYC between now and January 3, I highly recommend you go see the show. I know the show was in DC's National Gallery of Art earlier this year from January to April, but I'm not sure where this show is headed next, if at all. At the very least, go pick up a copy of the book. You won't be disappointed with any copy I'm sure, but the Steidl version Tony gave me is sublime and I highly recommend it.