Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
I encounter art almost every day while traveling around the city on assignment as a newspaper photographer.<\/p>\n
Public art isn\u2019t unusual in cities around the world, but Philadelphia stands out for the way it has made art part of its infrastructure and identity. <\/p>\n
The city has had a civic strategy for creating it since 1959, when it established the Percent for Art<\/a> program, dedicating a portion of public redevelopment budgets to public art projects. More than 350 works have been commissioned over the decades. And since 1984, Mural Arts Philadelphia<\/a> has been telling stories, celebrating neighborhoods, and addressing social issues through more than 4,000 murals.<\/p>\n I could spend decades trying to document them all, but I\u2019m not that kind of photographer. I\u2019ve always wrestled with how to \u201crephotograph\u201d another artist\u2019s work. They are expressing a personal vision, emotion, or concept, while my job is to inform the public by documenting real events as they happen. <\/p>\n But even as I show readers what the art looks like, I want my pictures to reflectwithout distracting<\/a> from the artist\u2019s work, being accused of infringing<\/a>, or making it all about me<\/a>. (Disclaimer and apologies: Some of those links contain only text. None of the photos survived our digital archiving.)<\/p>\n So while I often stop to admire and study other artists\u2019 work, I tend to avoid photographing it. Unless something changes. Or there\u2019s a good reason. <\/p>\n Like after 9\/11. While documenting local reaction to the terrorist attacks, I spotted an American flag added to Freedom, the sculpture by Zenos Frudakis<\/a> at 16th & Vine Streets. The 7,000-pound, 20-foot-long bronze piece had been dedicated just a few months earlier.<\/p>\n Or when one of my colleagues is writing about it. <\/p>\n Stephanie Farr<\/a> is also a big fan of Frudakis\u2019 work. She included Freedom in The Inquirer\u2019s roundup of 76 neighborhood gems<\/a> earlier this year, ahead of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary<\/a>.<\/p>\n Frudakis later invited her to his studio, and while other photographers captured his work for her story<\/a>, I was assigned to \u201cupdate\u201d our file photo of Freedom. <\/p>\n And as if I needed another reason, Frudakis invites passersby to become part of his art. He included the words \u2018stand here\u2019 inside the empty space from which the figure has broken free. So I dove right in, photographing it from plenty of other angles, too.<\/p>\n Finally this week, almost two years to the day after photographing another prominent celebrity working at McDonalds,<\/a> I kept my \u201csports photographer\u201d membership active. <\/p>\n I made The Inquirer\u2019s Big Picture gallery<\/a> of the week\u2019s best sports photos with my usual non-action coverage, this time of Eagles star wide receiver DeVonta Smith<\/a> greeting fans and posing for photos at a McDonald\u2019s in Cherry Hill.<\/p>\n Fans wait outside for the arrival of DeVonta Smith on Tuesday at the McDonald\u2019s on Rt. 38 in Cherry Hill.Read more<\/a>Tom Gralish \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish\u2019s \u201cScene Through the Lens\u201d photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer\u2019s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:<\/p>\n October 5, 2026: Jerry Atwood vacuums inside the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University after it closed the doors at 5 p.m. on the final day the museum was open to the public Sunday, September 27, 2026. Read more<\/a>Tom Gralish \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min I encounter art almost every day while traveling around the city on assignment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,369467],"class_list":["post-878626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-philadelphia-public-art-freedom-sculpture-tom-gralish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}