Lens Is More

Category: A borrowed Pentax

  • Hydrant creek, Philadelphia

    C. Thompson

    (1988)

  • Ritual, Havertown, Pa.

    C. Thompson

    (1988)

  • Generations, Philadelphia

    C. Thompson

    (1988)

  • Wailing souls, Philadelphia

    C. Thompson
    Is that a juice box? Looks like a juice box.

    I was driving home on the morning of Sept. 12, 1987, in my first car, a 1966 Pontiac Catalina, after ending the previous night’s party on my host’s couch. The car had 421 cubic inches under the hood, an aquamarine Lucite steering wheel, and the profile of an Indian head in the dash that lit when the high beams were on. The radio, however, was AM only, so I kept a seriously giant boombox in the back seat. That grey morning, the box told me Peter Tosh had been shot to death in Jamaica the night before in a botched home-invasion robbery. At the time, I was mixing sound for a Philadelphia-area, white-boy ska-reggae band, and the news hit us hard. A year later, Tosh’s son, Andrew, taking up the mantle, brought some of the Wailers on tour. A very short-lived magazine assigned me to cover the son with his father’s band. (Carlton “Santa” Davis was drumming with a bullet still inside him somewhere, my memory says.) Here’s the boy Tosh, age 19 or 20, with, I think (pretty sure), Earl “Chinna” Smith outside the former Chestnut Cabaret, 38th and Chestnut Sts. (1988)

  • Alto, West Philadelphia

    C. Thompson
    Ever faithful.

    This is Emily, who was called Alto, my precious little girl who deserved a better life than I gave her in my twenties. She curled up with me anyway, until I had to go away to New York City to claim a life and left her behind. She lived out her years in the ample lap of a friend of my mother, with another dog and plenty of love, while going blind and deaf. She was put down when the old woman died, I learned after the fact. It’s not worth touching up the debris on the shot. We lived a dirty, meager life. Might as well own it. (1987)

  • College rock, Swarthmore, Pa.

    C. Thompson
    I’m guessing it was Stevie Wonder.

    WSRN, 91.5 FM, the sound of Swarthmore College. (1988)

  • Girls of summer, Philadelphia

    C. Thompson
    Wonder how they turned out.

    In tight-knit blocks like this one, everyone’s porch was everyone’s porch. Like an English drawing-room comedy, but outside and with front stoops. They came to fuss over my little dog, who charmed all ages, and to try their nascent game on the sinewy boy in his twenties who kept her. This was post-fire hydrant. In a short while they’d move on to another house, another whim. (1988)

  • City guy, Philadelphia

    C. Thompson
    The biggest wheel on the block.

    (1988)