Bewitched by Eastwick

Nathaniel Popkin over at Hidden City Philadelphia asked me to shoot the Eastwick section of Southwest Philadelphia a few weeks ago to accompany a piece he’d written on the 50th anniversary of Eastwick’s groundbreaking. Having lived my entire life in and around the city, I had spent approximately zero time in Eastwick, save for trips to the airport and the Heinz Wildlife Refuge. I have to say, without a doubt, it is one of the city’s strangest neighborhoods. I don’t mean strange in a disrespectful way, but, rather, it’s strange in that it’s such a  mishmosh of abandoned houses on the flood-prone marshlands, stacks of tires, post-war housing, occasional kitsch, and an absurd amount of antique/classic cars. Seriously, there are tires everywhere. Since I’m not qualified to talk about it, I’ll not touch on the controversy that surrounds the founding of Eastwick, but I will urge you to read about it in Nathaniel’s piece.

This was a fun shoot for me. Eastwick is pretty big and there are definitely areas you don’t want to walk around in with a camera slung around your neck, so I spent most of the day in the car, zipping from place to place, which is very different than my preferred walk-around style. I would like to have found some more people, but the streets were completely empty, despite it being 10 a.m. on a Saturday.