Goodbye Philadelphia Days

I recently finished digitizing some old film.

The photographs were taken between 1989 and 1991, mostly during the years I lived in Philadelphia.

Those days were not always easy, but the memories that remain have a quiet gentleness to them now.

When I returned to the city for a short visit in 2001, I found that I no longer felt like taking photographs.

Nothing was wrong with the city itself; I had simply changed.

The sense of belonging I once carried—the feeling that I had a place, people, and a daily life there—was no longer with me.

Most of the friends, classmates, and professors who had filled my days back then had already moved on.

The streets looked familiar, but the people who once made them familiar were gone.

I walked through the city as someone passing through.

Looking back, I think my photographs have always depended on some small connection to the community around me, however limited that connection may be.

Without it, I tend to put the camera down.

As I went through the old negatives, memories of the people I once knew returned unexpectedly—small details I had almost forgotten.

And with them came a passage from Salinger that stayed with me:

“About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about.

Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance.

I think I even miss that goddam Maurice.

It’s funny.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything.

If you do, you start missing everybody.”

—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I understand that passage a little better now.

Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Montego Bay

1989–1991