Show me the Franklins | Scene Through the Lens
Ben-there done-that.
The city celebrated the 300th anniversary of Ben Franklin’s arrival in Philadelphia last week, as a 17-year-old coming from Boston. Among his many other accomplishments, he bought the Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23, and made it the most successful newspaper in the colonies.
My love of history - and Philadelphia - manifests itself in many ways in my own newspaper photography. Nowhere was that more on display then when I spent a year photographing all things Franklin to mark his 300th birthday in 2006.
More than 500 of those photos were processed through a software app to build a 1,200-image montage portrait that took up the entire front page of The Inquirer.
With this year’s Franklin anniversary, it was published again.
It included busts and statues of Ben, the bridge, faces of his wannabes, names of businesses, schools, streets and cities, toys and video games — even a Franklinia alatamaha blossom.
Some of them are in the gallery. Plus, in the years since, I have continued to catalogue all things Franklin, so a few of those are here too:
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 Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: