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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Because I'm easy, and because somebody (the artist's son) asked for it, here's a color version of the black & white photo that ran in my "Scene Through the Lens" newspaper column a couple of weeks ago.

The sculpture of the seated older man is one of three pieces by Leonard Baskin installed in 1966 on the plaza at Society Hill Towers during Philadelphia's urban renewal. The work is called Old Man, Young Man, The Future and was Baskin's first major sculpture created for an outdoor setting. It was commissioned as part of the Redevelopment Authority's "Percent for Art” program mandating that a percentage of construction costs for municipal projects be set aside for fine arts.

Over 300 works of art have been commissioned since the program - the first of its kind in the nation - was created fifty years ago. An exhibition, One Percent, of photographs by students from The University of the Arts, Moore College of Art, Temple University Tyler School of Art and The Art Institute of Philadelphia  is currently on exhibit at The Art Institute Gallery on Chestnut Street.

Baskin's is not the only works of public art that have ended up in my photos recently. A quick look turned up these two in just the past couple weeks (only one's a "percent for art" work):

That's one of the twelve life-size Humanity in Motion figures by Jonathan Borofsky - wearing special 3-D glasses during unveiling/preview of “The Holiday Spectacular in 3-D,” in the lobby of the Comcast Center.

On the wall at the West Philadelphia branch of Settlement Music School is "Music: Joy of Life" by Sam Maitin.  I was doing a quick lighting test for a portrait (it hasn't run in the newspaper yet) when the kids passed through the lobby.

Posted by Tom Gralish @ 2:28 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About Tom Gralish
Tom Gralish is a general assignment photographer at The Inquirer, concentrating on local news and self-generated feature photos. He has been at the paper since 1983, photographing everything from revolution in the Philippines to George W. Bush’s road to the White House to homeless people living on the street right outside his newspaper's front door. For his photo essay on Philadelphia’s homeless, he was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Award. His weekly newspaper column, "Scene Through the Lens," takes a look at Philadelphia's urban landscape. Gralish, along with Inquirer colleague and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael Vitez, spent a year visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art to capture the stories and photos of "Rocky runners" who come from all over the world to climb the steps - just as Sylvester Stallone did in the Academy Award winning film, Rocky. Their book, Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope and Happiness at America’s Most Famous Steps, was published in November 2006.