Flag fan | Scene Through the Lens

As we head into the week celebrating America’s 248th, I confess to recycling an idea for a birthday photo.

I made a similar photo in my hometown for my Instagram Morning Walk collection a few years ago. Last week I re-photographed the huge flag at the Federal Courthouse at 6th and Market Streets, a block from Independence Hall (the first time, back in March, it wasn’t published).

As a photographer working in the birthplace of our country, I am a big fan of the Fourth of July - and the flag and all it stands for.

The significance of the day, and this place, is always brought home to me whenever I’m in our city’s Historic District. I’ve written often about my affinity for the neighborhood and how much I relish walking the same streets as the Founders. The same streets they crossed every day on their way to work on the Declaration, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.

For years when meandering through the National Park I would visit the Liberty Bell or Independence Hall. Security screenings make such an impulsive entry impractical now, but I can easily pass through the always-open outdoor Presidents House Site, right across the street from our newsroom offices on Independence Mall.

The exhibit examines the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation. George Washington lived and worked at a home that once stood on the spot - along with his household, including at least nine enslaved Africans from his Mount Vernon home.

I am reminded when Thomas Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” that equality was not all-inclusive.

The women’s suffrage movement proclaimed in 1848 that “all men and women are created equal.” Frederick Douglass, speaking four years later, asked “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?…You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Other groups today still look to the document we celebrate this week as they seek their equal place in America.

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: