First photo from 46th and Chestnut. Best suggested explanation: someone got stuck and cut their way out with their light saber.

Thinking about the introduction to this book — Witness in our time — and the role of documentary photography in society. When are you documenting the reality of life in 2023? And when are you a dilettante, a voyeur, some fool taking photos?

This poorly framed shot — one student was particularly vicious in her critique of my composition — captured that feeling. I walk this route every day. Every day I see this human in this space. From my neighborhood to my school, I witness all manner of things, things that may or may not be seen by others, things that may or may not need to be seen by others. What’s a reflection of me and what’s the city of Philadelphia? Where’s the overlap, if any?

Yet here I go, with my dress shirt and backpack, from one neighborhood to another, taking photos.

Light, Ken. Witness in Our Time?: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers. 2nd ed. Smithsonian Books, 2010.

177 Miles for March