Street Kings

John Vettese sees what develops: "Streets of Philadelphia: Photography 1970-1985"

by John Vettese

Starting with preparations for the nation's bicentennial and ending with the MOVE bombing and its fallout, "Streets of Philadelphia: Photography 1970-1985" is a time capsule of a city in transition. But what's most striking as you wander through the exhibit is how much the city seems the same.

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We drive different cars, yes, and gangs of teenagers dress differently. But many of the motifs that recur among the 21 photographers on display ring true today. Philadelphia still seems perpetually under construction. It is still a place where one can see bright festivities a breath away from unfortunate blight. And once a year, a bunch of manly men still dress up as ladies and parade tipsily down Broad Street.

Take Don Camp's Chinatown Life (pictured), shot on the 900 block of Race Street in 1973. It tightly frames a dense pileup of cars parked at meters, layered alongside vertical storefront signs in a variety of languages. Delivery trucks double-park to rush goods in and out of businesses, and the arc of the Ben Franklin Bridge spans the background. The frenzied block was shot more than three decades ago, and looks more or less like it did last week.

In selecting works, curator John Caperton used a loose definition of street photography, showcasing images of people as well as places, events and abstractions. Some work is strictly journalistic (like Tom Gralish's Inquirer study of homelessness in the winter) while other photos pass for portraiture.

Much of the work on display looks like you'd expect street photography to look. In addition to Camp's image of Race Street, we see candid faces classically captured by George Krause. In Cool Sweet, Krause shows a young black boy in front of a latched storefront doorway; he stands next to a wall with the words "The Cool Sweet Cake" scrawled into its stucco. Is Krause implying the boy is responsible for the graffiti, or that he's cool? The juxtaposition is bizarre, but captivating.

More striking are the studies of the streets themselves, being built — or not, as it were. Paul Runyon is shown focusing on the settlement of Manayunk in the 1980s, whereas James B. Abbott evidently spent the same era studying the interminably long construction of the Vine Street Expressway. One particularly biting image of Abbott's shows an unfinished flyover at the river titled Ben Franklin Bridge and Ramp to Nowhere.

Laurence Salzmann's Making Way for I-95 is deceptively surreal. We see an elderly Queen Village woman sweeping the sidewalk in front of her home, which under regular circumstances would be a simple enough image. But Salzmann took the shot looking outward from her stoop; on the other side of her street sits a scar of rubble, dirt and decimation as construction crews prepare to pave the highway. Not knowing the circumstances, one could imagine that the woman is preparing for a cleaning task of monumental proportions.

The Mummers are also a recurrent theme in the exhibit, one that is undeniably unique to Philadelphia's street photography. Julie Jensen Bryan's endearing 2 Street shows a young mummer on a doorstep, eagerly awaiting the storied post-parade celebration as exhausted family members sit on the opposite side of a picture window.

While the best images in "Streets of Philadelphia" are the ones taking these unconventional approaches to their subjects, the show at large succeeds in collecting poised, thoughtful works, despite familiarity.

The only piece that doesn't quite work is Thomas Porett's multimedia photo montage of pedestrians on the go. The images on their own are shot in an extremely close, almost intrusive Harry Callahan-esque manner, which would be interesting on its own. But Porett was noted in the '70s and '80s for presenting his work as slide shows, and this particular slide show juxtaposes the photos with an audio track of sound clips involving the Red Scare, George Wallace and '60s-era paranoia, muddled up with dissonant noises and harsh panning.

Porett's aim, it seems, is to comment on the senselessness of the random persecution ("We knew he was a communist just looking at him!" is repeated ad nauseam) that could target any one of these rather normal-looking people. It's a good discussion, and, like the exhibit at large, it still rings true today. But the abrasive soundtrack is so out of sync with this series of images that the point, while noble, feels forced.

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)