Walking Ridge Avenue Barefoot: A Monastic Street Photography Journey
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.
Currently walking along Ridge Avenue here in Philadelphia.
I just found an $80 adjustable swivel bar stool… and a clitoral tip stimulator.
Wait a minute.
What?
No way.
Maybe I shouldn’t touch that.
Anyway.
The thought of the day is this:
I’m treating photography like a monastic journey.
Imagine the goal is simply to walk.
That’s it.
Just walk.
Currently I’m making my way down Ridge Avenue from the border of Philadelphia into Center City, geotagging the entire walk and photographing everything that catches my attention.
The buildings.
The infrastructure.
The windows.
The shadows.
Whatever resonates with my aesthetic sensitivities.
Everything is shot in high-contrast black and white, composed quickly and intuitively using automatic settings.
AV mode.
f/8.
Snap focus at 2 meters.
Point and shoot, baby.
I’ve got the red filter on right now, which is pretty awesome.
Photographing Without Thinking
I’m basically geotagging my city without overthinking what I’m photographing.
This isn’t some complicated art project.
I’m not trying to be clever.
I’m just making snapshots along a walk.
One street.
One day.
One direction.
An extreme creative constraint.
And honestly, it feels like a monastic journey.
I’m even walking barefoot.
So far I’ve covered:
- Broad Street
- Market Street
- Frankford Avenue
- Germantown Avenue
- Washington Avenue
- Ridge Avenue
The goal is to cover the major arteries of Philadelphia.
To archive them.
To preserve them.
Building a Living Map of the City
Everything is geotagged and organized into a system that gets published on my website.
You can actually participate.
As long as your photos contain GPS coordinates in the metadata, you can upload your own walks and map them too.
I’d love to see people use this from all over the world.
The entire thing is automated.
I even added a feature that lets you download the project and host it yourself.
The idea is simple:
Map your walks.
Build your own archive.
Create your own geography.
The Walk Becomes a Zine
What’s exciting is that the final result isn’t just a website.
It’s a physical object.
I’m generating small zines from these walks using 36 photographs.
Everything gets printed on regular computer paper using a monochrome Brother LaserJet printer.
Then I staple it together at home.
Done.
Simple.
I’ve also been storing the work inside manila folders.
Sometimes I think about including physical objects found during the walk.
An evidence bag.
A receipt.
A note.
A piece of debris.
Maybe even a clitoral stimulator.
Who knows.
Photography Is Physical
This brings me to something important.
Photography is physical.
People act like photography is all about vision.
Sure.
Your eyes matter.
Your brain matters.
But your legs matter too.
Your vitality matters.
Your energy matters.
It’s your body carrying your head through space.
It’s your feet hitting the pavement.
It’s the miles.
It’s the effort.
He who walks the most shall win.
Let’s make it a competition.
Who’s walking the furthest?
Who’s covering the most ground?
Who’s actually out there?
We’re bipedal chickens.
That’s what we are.
I’m just a barefoot bipedal chicken walking down Ridge Avenue kicking rocks.
Preserving Space and Time
The real goal is simple:
Preserve what life looks like right here, right now.
Nothing fancy.
Nothing dramatic.
Just a visual record of a specific place and time.
Everything is automatically timestamped.
Everything is automatically captioned.
The work becomes an archive.
And when you commit to photographing a single street, something interesting happens.
You begin to see differently.
The mundane becomes fascinating.
A security camera.
A lamppost.
A shadow.
A storefront.
A sign.
The surprises start appearing.
Eugene Atget and the Ricoh GR
In a way, this project feels connected to Eugene Atget.
Photographing streets.
Signs.
Buildings.
Lampposts.
The infrastructure of everyday life.
The Ricoh GR is perfect for this.
A quick tip:
If you assign crop mode to a button, you can instantly switch into a 50mm equivalent view.
Tap twice.
Boom.
Now you have a tighter composition without walking closer.
It’s fast.
Efficient.
Perfect for projects like this.
Everything is shot as small JPEGs.
Black and white.
Cranked to the maximum.
And the results look beautiful on cheap printer paper.
An Unexpected Discovery
Then something unexpected happened.
I stopped to photograph an old stone house.
A man came outside.
His name was John.
And suddenly I found myself learning the history of one of the oldest homes on Ridge Avenue.
The house was built in 1795 by Joseph Starne, a Revolutionary War veteran who marched to Valley Forge at sixteen years old.
John explained the history of the property.
The fireplaces.
The architecture.
The stonework.
The original construction methods.
The Dutch influence.
The Native American history of Ridge Avenue itself.
One photograph led to a conversation.
One conversation led to a house tour.
And suddenly the walk became something much bigger.
The Oldest House on Ridge Avenue
Inside the house felt like stepping through time.
Original beams.
Historic fireplaces.
Ancient artifacts.
Dutch glassware.
German craftsmanship.
Old photographs.
Family history.
The entire place felt alive.
Preserved.
Protected.
Remembered.
And the funny thing is:
I never planned any of it.
I was just walking.
Life Is a Video Game
What I realized afterward is that life works a lot like a video game.
You go out.
You explore.
You unlock new parts of the map.
You discover hidden locations.
You meet unexpected characters.
You accept side quests.
You learn things.
You gain experience.
Today I discovered the oldest house on Ridge Avenue.
I met a local historian.
I learned something about the place where I grew up.
All because I decided to walk.
That’s why I love this geotagging project.
It’s not really about photography.
Photography is just the excuse.
The real thing is exploration.
Discovery.
Participation.
Curiosity.
It’s about lighting up the map.
And maybe that’s what photography has always been.
Just a reason to keep walking.