Looking back at the Summer of ‘22 | Scene Through the Lens

I’m not an official Inquirer columnist, but I’ve played one in this space for a couple of decades now. I figure that allows me to use a time-honored columnist’s crutch: recycling previous work.

So as we finish the hot, humid, hazy days of summer, here are a few things I photographed over the past few months.

Nothing says summer like heading out on the road.

The new normal was almost a return to the pre-pandemic version. Like many around the Philadelphia region, I was glad to get out.

In early August, the Cameron County Fair opened in a county with 4,547 residents, the least populated of Pennsylvania’s ’s 67 counties. The fair is remote, with relatively low attendance, and the volunteer fair committee kept it going through both summers of the pandemic. They held it again this summer.

Nothing makes a road trip better than stumbling across really big and quirky roadside advertising attractions planted to lure tourists.

Maryland drivers are already familiar with the eight-foot chicken, above, that I saw outside of a South Jersey outlet of Royal Farms, a convenience store and gas station chain that also serves pressure-cooked in-the-store fried chicken. Based out of Baltimore, it has been expanding into our region in recent years.

Another chicken made up this trio of roadside attractions that I found outside Carlisle as the summer started. The central Pennsylvania community was hosting debates for Pennsylvania’s primary election. Nine candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties debated over consecutive nights in the race to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Pat Toomey.

It seems a Pennsylvania road trip also appeals to President Biden, who recently scheduled three visits to Pennsylvania in a week. I photographed him during this second visit at Independence Hall on Thursday, and he was to appear for a third time in Pittsburgh on Labor Day.)

Former President Trump was also in the state, holding a rally in Wilkes-Barre for state GOP candidates over the weekend that was covered by my colleague Yong Kim.

Presidents are exciting to cover, but it’s just as much fun photographing the preparations for their visits, as well as the candidates running in local and state-wide races. The Pennsylvania races are critical in the national midterm elections, and I am looking forward to things speeding up when campaign season traditionally kicks into high gear at the end of the summer.

The county fair wasn’t the only public gathering I photographed. I was with the crowds as Philly celebrated 50 years of Pride, the annual Odunde Festival back on South Street, and the Ukrainian community observed the 31st anniversary of the country’s independence with folk art, music, and dance. And small towns blocked off their downtown streets.

I have not photographed the Phillies this summer (playoffs, anyone?) but I did spend a Sunday afternoon with a baseball team for young adults with disabilities, whose game followed Major League Baseball rules.

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:

» SEE MORE: Archived columns and Twenty years of a photo column