June 9, 2025: A sticker-festooned car is parked in the garage of the Center City hotel hosting a four-day non-partisan gathering of Pennsylvania voting electorate.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
That wasn’t my only political event this week. Gov. Josh Shapiro - who spoke on Friday at the One Room event - was in town earlier to announce Pennsylvania is suing President Trump’s administration in an effort to restore $13 million in funds for food banks and farmers that the USDA eliminated earlier this year.
He visits Philadelphia often enough our readers know what the governor looks like, so his appearance at a news conference at the Share Food Program gave me an opportunity to cover it without having to picture the elaborate mise en scène set up as a backdrop - at least not head on!
Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:
June 2, 2025: Summer sundresses on a spring Saturday in the Square. Friends meet and are reflected in the water of the Rittenhouse Square fountain.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 26, 2025: Haddon Township Fire Lts. Alex Tessing and Kyler Graeber place 31 American flags on the Westmont Fire Company 1 station ahead of Memorial Day. Each flag has the name of a township resident who gave their lives while serving in the U.S. armed forces.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 19, 2025: A detail on the Kelly Family Gates (2003) at Addams Hall on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Designed by Mark Lueders, an alumnus and sculptor, the gates incorporate bronze sculptures of 56 hands from 46 different artists with their respective tools - including a pair of hands holding a camera. Addams Hall, the center for fine arts at Penn, was named for “Addams Family” cartoonist Charles Addams, also a Penn alum. (His “Thing” character is not one of the gate’s hands.)Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 12, 2025: Rose McManus, with Cashman & Associates events marketing, holds things together — and upright behind the scenes at a Philly 250 / Semiquincentennial event in LOVE Park.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
May 5, 2025: Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, pauses after laying a bouquet of flowers at a portrait of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, during a dedication ceremony for the Bicentennial Bell at Benjamin Rush Garden. The plaque commemorates the queen’s presentation of the bell in 1976 to the people of the United States from the people of Great Britain on the 200th anniversary of American independence. It was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in London, the same foundry that originally cast the Liberty Bell in 1751. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 28, 2025: Pigeons along 15th Street in Penn Center. Some pedestrians feed, some pass by, some pause, some photograph.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 21, 2025: Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and former University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann is back on the Penn campus to attend a "Common Sense Diplomacy" event. The artwork, at the sponsoring Perry World House, is computer-generated composite color photography by Do Ho Suh titled “High School Uniface: Girl” and “High School Uniface: Boy.”Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 14, 2025: Restored Depression-era classic green and white subway tiles greet train passengers in the former “Ghost Station” as PATCO’s Franklin Square Station is back online for the first time in almost 50 years. The station opened in 1936 as part of the Bridge Line running between Philadelphia and Camden, sporadically opening and closing due to low ridership in the years since. It was last used in the late 1970s after opening for a few years for the Bicentennial. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 7, 2025: A Philadelphian on their way to a protest shares their sign with Dubliners at the recently reopened Portal in LOVE Park. Vandalism had forced a two-month closure of Philly’s edition of the art installation which connects people in Vilnius, Lithuania; Lublin, Poland; and Ireland. Its permanent location will be decided in an online poll between LOVE Park, where it debuted in October, and the City Hall courtyard.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 31, 2025: Looking a lot like their prehistoric dinosaur ancestors, Canada geese take off in flight near the pond at the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University. The museum opened March 29, showcasing more than a century of internationally recognized dinosaur fossils and history. Birds are descendants of a group of two-legged, meat-eating bipedal dinosaurs called theropods.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 24, 2025: Meeting at the Eagle, during the final days of the Center City Macy’s. The John Wanamaker department store was dedicated in 1911 by then-President William H. Taft, and was sold in 1995. It’s been a Hecht’s, Strawbridge’s, Lord & Taylor, and most recently, a Macy’s, which closed for good on Sunday.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 17, 2025: Emine Emanet reads the paper hearts, flowers, and notes of support and affection left by neighbors outside her Jersey Kebab restaurant in Haddon Township Mar. 13, the day after her release from detention. “This is like my home,” she said when returning for the first time since she was arrested there and taken away in handcuffs by ICE agents two weeks earlier.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 10, 2025: Ed Fischer of Old City bears silent witness holding a Ukrainian flag across from Franklin Square. He said he wanted to show that recent events do not reflect “the sentiment of the American people.” Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 3, 2025: La Salle men’s head basketball coach Fran Dunphy waits in the wings before a news conference in honor of his recent retirement announcement. Later that evening, he coached his 1,000th game.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 24, 2025: A rusted 990-foot cruise ship docked for almost three decades on the Delaware River was towed away leaving a huge gap on the waterfront skyline. The SS United States was such a part of the South Philadelphia landscape the IKEA store across the street had a sign explaining its history on their restaurant’s window.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
