This is the outside wall of Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens. I don’t think it’s possible to just walk right by something like this and not want to get a peek inside.
Category Archives: Photography
The Great Out There
Julie and I were passing the alley behind her parents’ grocery store when she picked up a fallen head of cabbage and declared it a metaphor for her life. She liked grand statements and big gestures, so as she stood with a foot on the curb and the cabbage thrust high into the air, I expected her to break out into some poetic explanation of how this brown, wilting cabbage so perfectly encompassed her life’s trajectory.
She said, in boring, plain english, that she felt old: she felt it as quiet nights in became preferable; as her internal clock woke her earlier and earlier; as she worried about her future, plotting ifs and thens until the vast uncertainty of it made her cower. She knew it would come. “I’ll just be driving along and BANG! Future! Out of nowhere!” It would poof into existence as a lamppost in the middle of the road, and she’d run right into it. Continue reading
Still Here
Took this at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens. It’s a mosaic work by Isaiah Zagar. Took him 14 years to finish it. 14 years!
The place will overload you with colors. As I tried taking some color out to bring more focus on the couple, I started to really dig the apocalyptic look of everything behind them. Maybe I’ve played too much Fallout.
Ollie number seven 