The art of freedom

I encounter art almost every day while traveling around the city on assignment as a newspaper photographer.

Public art isn’t unusual in cities around the world, but Philadelphia stands out for the way it has made art part of its infrastructure and identity.

The city has had a civic strategy for creating it since 1959, when it established the Percent for Art program, dedicating a portion of public redevelopment budgets to public art projects. More than 350 works have been commissioned over the decades. And since 1984, Mural Arts Philadelphia has been telling stories, celebrating neighborhoods, and addressing social issues through more than 4,000 murals.

I could spend decades trying to document them all, but I’m not that kind of photographer. I’ve always wrestled with how to “rephotograph” another artist’s work. They are expressing a personal vision, emotion, or concept, while my job is to inform the public by documenting real events as they happen.

But even as I show readers what the art looks like, I want my pictures to reflectwithout distracting from the artist’s work, being accused of infringing, or making it all about me. (Disclaimer and apologies: Some of those links contain only text. None of the photos survived our digital archiving.)

So while I often stop to admire and study other artists’ work, I tend to avoid photographing it. Unless something changes. Or there’s a good reason.

Like after 9/11. While documenting local reaction to the terrorist attacks, I spotted an American flag added to Freedom, the sculpture by Zenos Frudakis at 16th & Vine Streets. The 7,000-pound, 20-foot-long bronze piece had been dedicated just a few months earlier.

Or when one of my colleagues is writing about it.

Stephanie Farr is also a big fan of Frudakis’ work. She included Freedom in The Inquirer’s roundup of 76 neighborhood gems earlier this year, ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Frudakis later invited her to his studio, and while other photographers captured his work for her story, I was assigned to “update” our file photo of Freedom.

And as if I needed another reason, Frudakis invites passersby to become part of his art. He included the words ‘stand here’ inside the empty space from which the figure has broken free. So I dove right in, photographing it from plenty of other angles, too.

Finally this week, almost two years to the day after photographing another prominent celebrity working at McDonalds, I kept my “sports photographer” membership active.

I made The Inquirer’s Big Picture gallery of the week’s best sports photos with my usual non-action coverage, this time of Eagles star wide receiver DeVonta Smith greeting fans and posing for photos at a McDonald’s in Cherry Hill.

Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: