a community guide to lawrenceville

Back in October, C and i wandered down into Lawrenceville with our respective cameras (his the motion, mine the still) to shoot. It was the last warm and gorgeous day of the year, which he somehow instinctively knew. He announced it shortly after we awakened, as he stood at the foot of our bed and shrugged on two tee shirts. His voice blended urgency with certainty, like it does when he seems to be less speaking and more transmitting some knowledge he hears from just out of range. So i got up, got dressed, and we fed the cats and drove down the mountain.

First, he took some stock footage in residential backstreets near the Allegheny and the abandoned Heppenstall mill. After that, we, naturally, headed to the cemetery, where, naturally, the sun beamed distinct planks of thin pale light around gravestones, and, naturally, a hawk circled just above the trees, just low enough and lit enough for my camera to glimpse her pale tan belly. At the opening of the cemetery, past the turrets and iron gates, the road branches in several directions, each marked with a different color center line, so the living can follow the green or pink or white path to their dead. Like the yellow brick road. In a small stand of trees, someone placed an upended stump, its tangled roots petrified tentacles, beached, grapsing light from air instead of leaching water from dark. i want to crawl inside it and fuse. The leaves stain shade luscious green, the hue of wine-rushed blood--that heady. My arteries thirst for ground, press a little closer to skin surface. Take root, aim, shoot.

After we left the cemetery, C wanted to shoot the length of Butler Street, so i crouched in the passenger seat and we propped the camera on my knee and lap, my arm cradling its weight so we could fit the building tops in the frame. It turned out to be harder than it looked to hold the camera steady while i leaned awkwardly to look through the viewfinder, so we switched places and i drove while he shot. Like so many Pittsburgh neighborhoods, Lawrenceville's main drag mixes bright breathing commerce with faded abandoned storefronts. Cemeteries themselves, where the sun-bleached infrastructure of steel-boom commerce gathers thick, storm-grey dust: skeletal display racks, shelves and counters, pane glass shattered in webs and patched with cardboard and duct tape, ghosts of steelworkers' wives pale as the dated flyers and wheat-pasted street art plastered between them and your own sun-hungry reflection peering in.

All the while, C assembles and disassembles his equipment as he sets up and tears down, and i watch him, rapt at the sure way he handles the parts, how confidently he knows how they fit, knows exactly how hard he can snap and twist them. Fluid lines and angles appear as he aims the lens at the curvature and sway of the buildings and roads, which seem softer under his gaze. Right angles appear as they are: eroded brick, peeled paint, water logged boards and warped plate glass, all bare of the social glamour that makes them look sharp, flat, 9o degrees, beyond nature. Light takes space, some wild sharp lucidity resolves to fill the spaces between matter.
This was what i didn't know i wanted when i saw his film of the thaw all those years ago, not knowing it was his, but knowing i was in love with whoever captured all that melt. Streetlights and gutters and manholes all dripped icicles and footprints, puddles and rippling reflections. Every shot's subject steamed gorgeous and raw, like some great being leaned in close and breathed it warm under C's devoted gaze.

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He used footage from our prep day and another session to make a brief, tongue-in-cheek documentary of the neighborhood, including a few historical events recounted by the truly singular T. Glitter, some hilarious and candid interviews with residents and, also, glam rock. You can watch it here: A COMMUNITY GUIDE TO LAWRENCEVILLEA COMMUNITY GUIDE TO LAWRENCEVILLE


Muchlove, Pittsburgh.