Brother Marc Manley, one of my favorite photographers, has been capturing Philadelphia, one of my favorite of the broken cities, for many years. This time he provides a wonderful series done in a Lo-Fi Camera. I have previously featured his work in this essay. He really is the master of Philadelphia.

I would be remiss if I didn't say something about Philly. It is a most Muslim city -- it is beautiful and flawed and aspirational all at once. This is what I once wrote about it:

Much of the Philly I’ve experienced lies within those pictures. The following is what I wrote one day when my car was stuck in a great big mud hole due to the fact that the “parking lot” was unpaved and it had rained all day. You might see more Philly nostalgia out of me because I’m probably moving away. Anyway, here goes:

In North Philadelphia the cemeteries are in the sky: old sneakers tied to power lines mark the location of death. The townhouses, scarred and slashed by time, have bled red everywhere and now stand huddled together in fear at the approaching bulldozers. The chipped cement porches crumble each time the old man smoking a loosey drags his three-legged chair upon their backs. The pigeons have turned black to merge with the ash and the rats are cat-sized in order to stand a chance to survive. Tattered plastic bags look like tumbleweed when rolling up the street. Shirtless boys play football in empty lots and celebrate touchdowns by clattering and dancing upon shattered bottles of gin. When the police cruisers turn on their lights, the sudden invasion of lights reflects in the shiny eyes of the homeless man on the corner and causes football games to come to a premature end. Meanwhile, the cruiser runs the red light because no one is looking and drives quickly to the safety of the well-lit tomb that is downtown.

I suppose you should know that by the time I got finished a couple of guys rolled by, saw me spinning my wheels and pushed me out. They said “As Salam O Alaikum” upon leaving, even though I didn’t state that I was Muslim and they didn’t state that they weren’t.

I'll add that Philly makes me hate rich people. Smile Muslim Marxists, smile.