A street corner in South Philadelphia normally exists in a different space from the shores of the Tidal Basin in Washington, but this spring they share more than falling cherry blossoms: Each is empty save for a few lonely figures wandering in acts of courage or defiance. America looks different without people. It looks different from behind the wheel of a car, the only risk-free means of transportation these days. Mostly abandoned street furniture like bus shelters seems already to be passing from bustle to blight. Monuments stand naked in sharp relief, like symbols of loss and destruction in a poster for a post-apocalyptic war movie.
Photographer M. Scott Mahaskey—himself a former embed in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq—trained his camera on a different kind of danger zone, this one his own home territory of Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Viewed from the same passenger-side windows as in his armored cars, these once-familiar landscapes took on new psychic dimensions, at once forbidding and welcoming. And just like in Afghanistan and Iraq, he found more than a touch of reassuring humanity in the gentle spring air. —Peter Canellos
Source: politico.com
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