URBAN WATERSHEDS This project began with a chance encounter with Tim Schlitzer of GreenWorks while I was photographing on the streets of Camden, NJ. He asked if I would be interested in working on a project for GreenWorks, and though I don't consider myself an environmentalist or a nature photographer, I'm open to new adventures, so I agreed to meet with him and discuss it further. When we met, he told me about his idea to do a photographic essay on the Philadelphia watersheds and the numerous ways in which water is used in the city. It sounded like a challenging endeavor to me, so I accepted. After meeting with Tim, I tried to think of all the various ways water is used in our daily lives. I also pulled out a map of Philadelphia and began to take note of as many natural waterways as I could. I'm a native Californian who's been living in the Northeast for eleven years and in Philadelphia for about a year and a half, so I was surprised to immediately find nearly ten different rivers and creeks running through the city limits. I also noticed several lakes and reservoirs. I began to realize that this project would present an excellent opportunity for me to learn more about Philadelphia and to explore my new home. I also began to think about how I would go about photographing this project, including the equipment and materials involved. Landscape photographers often use large format cameras (such as 4"x5" or 8"x10") because of the extraordinary detail and tonal qualities they can get from large negatives. However, I decided against using my 4x5 camera because I wanted more freedom of movement, and I wanted to be able to experiment with various shooting angles without worrying about running out of film. I also decided against using 35mm cameras because I wanted more detailed resolution than they offer. So, I settled on two medium format cameras that I have: a 6x6cm Rolleiflex and a 6x4.5cm Mamiya. Tim and I had decided on going with a black-and-white look for its artistic possibilities, and I decided to use a high-speed (400 ASA) film to give me more flexibility in a wide range of lighting situations. We have grouped the pictures in eight categories that we think encompass the existence and use of water in Philly: daily use, civic beauty, education, recreation, preservation, power, natural beauty, and wildlife. I hope you enjoy and learn from these pictures of my photographic journey through the Philadelphia watershed. DAILY USE In trying to think of the daily uses of water that we so often take for granted, I wanted to concentrate on outdoor activities because I wanted to focus on the public uses we see everyday but probably don't think about, such as lawn sprinklers, car washes and public drinking fountains. I also, of course, thought of all the water that is used to nurture trees and gardens around the city, but for some reason I had a hard time finding many public displays of daily water use, maybe because of the time of year (October) and maybe because Philadelphia has been experiencing a drought for several months. I did, however, stumble across a community garden on North Street just north of Center City and thought it would present a perfect opportunity to photograph a garden being watered. After some phone calls to the Neighborhood Gardens Association, I was put in touch with the woman in charge of caring for the garden, Barbara Wolf. She was enthusiastic about participating in the project, but there was just one problem: the water in the garden had been shut off due to a mix-up in the transfer of the water bill from the Neighborhood Gardens Association to her. It took a couple of weeks of phone calls back and forth to get it all straightened out, but we finally met on a chilly late October morning, and I photographed her and some of her neighbors tending the garden. I was particularly impressed by examples of some of the produce they have grown. During one Saturday afternoon as I was driving around South Philly, I passed by a man who was hosing down his sidewalk. I stopped to talk to him and asked if I could photograph him for my project. He was hesitant at first but eventually relented, and I took several shots of him as he continued to hose the sidewalk and the gutter in front of his row house. We talked as I photographed, and he explained that he finds it necessary to hose the area at least once a week because of the debris left by those who hang out on the streets at night. He said he not only finds trash and busted beer bottles but also blood on occasion. CIVIC BEAUTY In addition to the natural beauty exhibited by Philadelphia's rivers and creeks, there are several locations where water has been used to add to the civic beauty of the city's urban centers. The Swann Memorial Fountain in Logan Circle sits on the Ben Franklin Parkway midway between City Hall and the Museum of Art. It was designed by Alexander Stirling Calder (of the famous Calder family of sculptors) and was completed in 1924. In addition to its attractiveness, it provides cool, wet relief to waders during hot summer days and unseasonably warm autumn days like the one on which I visited and found a mother and her two children sitting on the fountain's rim. Another fountain can be found a short walk down the Parkway at John F. Kennedy Plaza. The park there is known as LOVE Park because of the Robert Indiana "LOVE" sculpture that sits outside the fountain on the southeast side. When I visited the park one evening, I found a small army of skateboarders testing their skills on the concrete benches and steps surrounding the park. The brightly lit fountain in the background provided a nice backdrop for the silhouetted LOVE sign and the skateboarders who passed under it. I also chose the early evening light to photograph the Schuylkill River from a vantage point just above the Fairmount Waterworks. The waterworks is one of Philly's most famous landmarks and was considered an engineering marvel when it opened in 1815. It was the most advanced municipal water system of the time, pumping water out of the Schuylkill and up to a reservoir where the city's art museum now sits. The waterworks was decommissioned in 1909 after the Schuylkill became too polluted to be used as a source for municipal water, and the city switched to the upper Delaware River. It has remained a landmark however and has recently been undergoing a 24 million dollar renovation to restore it to its former beauty. There is a gazebo near the art museum that overlooks the waterworks, and it was from this position that I photographed the Schuylkill shortly after the sun went down. EDUCATION One of the encouraging aspects of working on this project has been discovering all of the numerous organizations that are working to educate people about the environment and watersheds. I came across many on the EPA's Adopt Your Watershed website, and contacted a few in the Philadelphia area to see if I could photograph their activities. The Senior Environment Corps operates out of the Center in the Park at Germantown's Vernon Park. Theirs is a program geared to encourage older citizens to learn more about the environment and participate in its preservation. Fred Lewis is one of the volunteers there, and I joined him and Bill, another volunteer, as they went out to Wissahickon Creek to perform water quality tests. The information they collect on such things as the oxygen level and the ph and conductivity levels is recorded and passed along to the EPA. Another one of the objectives of the Senior Environment Corps is intergenerational education and mentoring, and so, a group of students from the Fulton School were also at the creek on a field trip. Fred and Bill spent some time demonstrating their testing procedures to the kids who were then allowed to roam the area and collect their own samples of plant and insect life. I had a great time photographing them as they ran around enthusiastically turning over rocks and looking under bushes, and even tumbling down a grassy hill at one point. I also hooked up with another school, Springside in Chestnut Hill, to watch their water monitoring activities one day after classes. Teacher Scott Stein led a small group of teenage students through the heavily wooded area behind the school to the small Spring Mill Creek. There the students performed tests for dissolved oxygen and nitrate levels and conducted a biotic index test to search for macro invertebrates as an indication of what type of life exists in the creek. RECREATION The waterways of Philadelphia provide a source and a backdrop for many types of recreational activities, and I had no problem finding them. Along the Schuylkill, there is fishing, bicycling, rollerblading and boat rowing competitions. Along the Wissahickon, there are hikers, joggers and bicyclers. Kids play among the rocks that lie along the banks of the Delaware in Penn Treaty Park. And boaters relax under the Ben Franklin Bridge on the Delaware and enjoy some food and camaraderie. PRESERVATION Another major part of the task for watershed groups is the preservation of the watershed through direct clean-up activities. One of the most active in this area is the Friends of Pennypack Park group. They hold a monthly recycling program at Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia, and on the Saturday morning I attended, there were cars lined up in the parking lot to drop off plastic and paper recyclables to the two large garbage trucks there. Funds from the recycling efforts are used to finance trees, recycled benches and other useful items for the park that surrounds the Pennypack Creek. Another monthly activity of the group is a clean-up program that addresses different areas of the park each month. I photographed their October clean-up effort and was amazed at some of the items they pulled out of the creek and the bushes in the park. In additions to the expected items such as cans, bottles and paper trash, they collected tires, hub caps, shopping carts, a lawn mower, a tennis net and other items too numerous to list. They had a dedicated assemblage of people involved in the clean-up and a few surprise participants. A passing trio of young teenagers were so impressed by what the saw, they joined in and collected several bagfuls of trash. They were rewarded for their civic spirit with pretzels and juice. POWER One of my goals for this project was to get inside and photograph one of the three water treatment plants in Philadelphia. However, a discussion with the public relations general manager at the water department made it clear that this was not going to happen due to the heightened security present in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Disappointed, I was, nonetheless, able to take some exterior shots of the Belmont reservoir in West Philadelphia. The Belmont Reservoir serves the entire city west of the Schuylkill River and gets its water from the river. The water treatment plant there treats an average of 40 million gallons a day. There are also several water towers dotting the urban landscape of Philadelphia. These mini water storage systems are still active and help provide water pressure to the businesses that own them. NATURAL BEAUTY The Wissahickon Creek runs beside Lincoln Drive in Fairmount Park, and I have driven by it several times since I moved to Philadelphia a year and a half ago, but had never stopped to spend time there before this project. It was a beautiful early October Saturday when I first visited, and the sunlight reflecting off the water provided brilliant highlights that I tried to capture on film. There was a wonderfully tranquil mood present with the water slowly trickling over the rocks on its way toward the Schuylkill River. Several joggers, bikers and hikers were out on the hiking path that snakes along the creek. I next visited the Tookany Creek in Northeast Philadelphia. As I walked through the heavy foliage in the park surrounding the creek near the end of a sunny day, the sunlight peeked through the trees and dappled the landscape. It was an eerie experience pushing my way through the brush, as I seemed to be the only one in the park at that time. I finally made my way down to the creek and was again struck by the beauty of the water as it curved in and around the trees and bushes that line the banks. However, I also noticed several items of clothing and debris that had been left in the area. At one juncture where the creek passes under a traffic bridge, several large tree limbs as well as tires and metal trash cans were jammed together at the underpass, too large to pass under the bridge. In Northeast Philadelphia, there is also the Pennypack Creek and a great view of a train bridge which carries Amtrak and commuter trains over it. This creek feeds into the Delaware River, and if you follow it to its destination, you can see dramatic views of the Delaware near its northernmost spot in Philadelphia. WILDLIFE The natural waterways of Philadelphia are home to probably hundreds of species of birds, fish, reptiles and insects, and I encountered several on my photographic journey. Most memorable were a group of ducks in the Haverford College Lake. They seemed to be posing for the camera as they walked right up to the fence where I was standing. I also encountered a young girl there who had captured a small frog in her plastic container. She proudly displayed her prey as I snapped a portrait of her.