Driving past Baltimore on the I-95 overpass, for many the urge is to keep going, onward to Philly, New York, Boston. Somewhere important. But dive into this city and there's a unique soul worth knowing. You won't ever really KNOW its soul, but that elusive quality is part of the attraction, seduction even. One minute you can squint a little and get a whiff of the odd, fragile goulash of...
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Driving past Baltimore on the I-95 overpass, for many the urge is to keep going, onward to Philly, New York, Boston. Somewhere important. But dive into this city and there's a unique soul worth knowing. You won't ever really KNOW its soul, but that elusive quality is part of the attraction, seduction even. One minute you can squint a little and get a whiff of the odd, fragile goulash of Baltimore's signature cultural icons: John Waters' kitsch, Poe's melancholy, Mencken's pugnaciousness, Barry Levinson's nostalgia. The next minute you're blinking in a stagnant, proud, disjointed city that doesn't have an apparent reason for being.

Maybe it makes sense that 1950's nostalgia is such a big part of Baltimore's oeuvre. Those were the end days, before the long, slow slide toward oblivion. The once-muscular big brother to nearby Washington DC has become the country cousin. Are cities built on industrial anachronisms guaranteed a fresh start, a new life? Is it possible to reinvent from scratch? These are questions for many old American cities. In a sense it's the great American experiment.

It's not clear whether time is on Baltimore's side. Change is accelerating, slowly but surely reshaping the city, shedding old resonances. Beginning in 1999, I've taken a long-term approach to piecing together visual bits of the city's particular poetry before it disappears.
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