If you’ve ever been to Riverfront Park in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, you have undoubtedly seen the bronze sculpture of a man reading a newspaper. Even if you haven’t been to Harrisburg, all you have to do is hit one of the Harrisburg hashtags and you’ll see it in multiple photos posted each day. My point, which I’m taking forever to get to, is that this sculpture has been shot to death. Shit, I’ve probably taken a hundred photos of it on my various jaunts through Riverfront Park.
But regardless of how many photos are taken of the jaundiced icon, and how similar they are to one another, they are all different. They are each their own photograph. Even these three photos, all taken by the same person, with the same camera, and the same 50mm lens, within minutes of each other, are all different. And while they may be similar to photos I’ve taken before, I can assure you these are all fresh frames, compositions I failed to see in times before.
And if I can see the same thing differently each time I see it, imagine how many different perspectives exist in the world with so many different people living such varied lives. There is literally no limit to the amount of ways the world can be seen. Knowing this, how could we choose to live a life of anything other than humble quietude? Certainty is for dead things, living things change.
Photographed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 2019
