Through These Photographs

Art — Produced by Michael O’Reilly

A man lands at a major-metropolitan airport somewhere in the United States at night. He leaves the baggage claim and sets out on foot with an old fashioned large-format view camera slung over his shoulder like a hobo’s bindle. He is walking to the city center taking pictures along the way. The photographer is Will Steacy and these photographs will ultimately form the basis of his book DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS. A contributor to Harper’s and Esquire, Steacy’s photos of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are used in the opening credits of the HBO series, TREME. Steacy recently did a presentation of his STREETS photos at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC). In this ART segment, we talk to Steacy and Sarah Stolfa, the founder and director of PPAC about the need she saw in the Philadelphia area for an organization that could help with the emerging technology of digital photography, and about how she started doing her own work, taking pictures of the regulars at McGlinchey’s, where she tended bar while in school.