Tag Archives: photographs

Portraits of Philadelphia: Photographs by Joseph V. Labolito and Jim MacMillan, 1981-2023

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This year’s fall exhibit explores the images of two photographers, Joseph V. Labolito Photographic Prints and Collections – Joseph V. Labolito and Jim MacMillan Jim MacMillan – Journalist, educator and social innovator in Philadelphia, as they travelled around Philadelphia, photographing unique human experiences and fleeting moments in the city. This exhibit runs from November 13, 2023 to March 2024 in the exhibit space of Temple University’s Charles Library. More information about an opening reception is to follow.

Joseph V. Lobalito

Joseph V. Labolito’s career in photography began in 1977. For the past 27 years he has worked at Temple University as a senior photographer. Labolito documented the areas where he grew up and the places he frequented, capturing a deeply personal and authentic representation of Philadelphia, from the 1980s through the 2000s. Labolito describes his work as,

“a tribute to the city that has shaped me, the people who call it home, and the enduring spirit of Philadelphia. Through these photographs, I hope to share the beauty and resilience of this city with the world, inviting viewers to journey through time and celebrate the progress and evolution of Philadelphia.”

3644 North Broad Street
May 25, 1986
Photo by Joseph V. Labolito

Jim MacMillan is the founder and director of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting and its parent organization, the Initiative for Better Gun Violence Reporting, as well as assistant direct of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Klein College. During his photojournalism career, MacMillan spent 17 years at the Philadelphia Daily News and worked for The Associated Press in Boston and in Baghdad during the war in Iraq, for which his team was awarded The Pulitzer Prize. MacMillan says of his work,

Jim MacMillan

“every opportunity to take pictures on the streets of Philadelphia and tell the stories of our neighbors and neighborhoods has felt like an incredible privilege. Photographing activists in action during street-level protests and demonstrations has always felt like a special honor as we exercise our First Amendment rights together in the city where our nation was born.”

Peace protesters march down North Broad Street Saturday. Police estimated that ten thousand demonstrators marched in Philadelphia Saturday against war with Iraq.  
February 15, 2003
Philadelphia Daily News photo by Jim MacMillan

You can register to attend this event here.

-–Ann Mosher, BA II, SCRC

The Photography of Philip Taylor

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Walt Whitman Bridge construction, 1955

Since the late 1940s, Philadelphian Philip Taylor has been taking photographs of his environment—Philadelphia as it was in the intervening decades. His painstakingly-processed silver gelatin prints illuminate Walt Whitman Bridge construction, the homeless, pre-gentrification Society Hill, the Camac baths, the Philadelphia neighborhoods of South Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, and East Poplar, Atlantic City, and Philadelphia residents—both anonymous and famous—as well as his travels to Israel, the Canary Islands, and Cuba.

Philip Taylor attended local public schools in South Philadelphia. In 1943, during his junior year in high school, he dropped out to help support his family after his father died suddenly while working at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Taylor worked as a civilian in the Navy Department in Center City Philadelphia—in the mail room located next to the photography department. Drafted into the United States Army in 1944, Taylor served until 1946 at various stateside bases.

Homeless man on Philadelphia Skid Row, c. 1955

After the war, Taylor apprenticed as a union tradesman in the lithographic printing industry in Philadelphia. For the next twenty-five years, he worked the night shift as a master lithographic cameraman making half-tone negatives and color separations for the print medium at Mid-City Press, one of the largest commercial printers in Philadelphia.  Taylor also taught at the Philadelphia Lithographic Institute and holds two United States Government patents, one in the medical field and another in the lithographic field. He also invented two devices related to the lithographic printing industry.   Working full time, Taylor photographed his environment using a Rolleiflex 3.5F TLR camera and a Leica 35mm camera, and frequently stayed up until dawn developing negatives into photographic prints.

Old City Jerusalem, c. 1973

Temple University Libraries are grateful to Mr. Taylor for his donation of his life’s work. It will serve as a resource in the Special Collections Research Center for study and research. Please join us for a reception celebrating his work, February 26, 4:00  – 7:00, Paley Library Lecture Hall.   The exhibit is on view on the ground and first floors and mezzanine of Paley  through August 2016.

–Margery Sly, Director of Special Collections

We mourn the passing of Phil Taylor on October 29, 2021, and rejoice that his vision of Philadelphia and the world is preserved through his photography.