My Life As Seen Through My Phone: January 2015
My life as seen through my phone has been a series I’ve worked on for three years now. The first year was simply documentation. Take photos via my phone and at the end of the month, select my favorites and share them. The second year I decided to curate my shots by picking a theme early on in the month and sharing the images that fit within the selected theme. This year I’ve decided to take it beyond the phone:
This year, to go along with my initiative to motivate and inspire more mixed media work, I’ve come up with a new my life as seen through my phone challenge. Each month I’ll photograph whatever inspires and grabs me. Then at the end of the month, I’ll select a single image and create a mixed media piece from it. I’ll post this finalized piece with any comments or notes about the process or inspiration.
For January, I selected a shot I took of the side of Franklin Fountain‘s building. If you’ve ever walked around Philadelphia, and most especially Old City, you’ll notice there are several older buildings that still display the remnants of signs, advertisements, and even building attachements from the past. Some are faded, some are very obvious and some are painted over.
I love seeing what remains from Philadelphia’s long and historic past. Not just to wonder what was once there but also to see what I can find in what remains. With that in mind, I took this image of the washed away signage on the side of Franklin Fountain and drew what shapes, letters, and lines I could see and find.
The end result became a simple, almost-traced-somewhat-imagined collage:
I’ve never been one who loves perspective or architectural drawings, but it’s hard to not be drawn to the lines of the buildings in Old City.
Do you have a favorite building in Philly? Tell me in the comments!