This summer I had the opportunity to spend a month in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Claire was with me the entire time and spent a good deal of the month visiting our family. I expected more time sitting, watching movies I’ve not seen, and generally being a log lump while working on my lengthy to-do list. I didn’t expect to travel around as much as I did. For example, one week I drove to Lawrence County to visit with my mother’s cousin all day on Monday, road around with my cousin Brian another day to shoot our city, and the third day I went with a friend I’ve not seen in 15 years to photograph another part of the city. Friends surprised us by driving from Virginia for a long weekend, and people I didn’t think I’d see I spent a lot of time with.

Auntie M & Claire on the John Deere in our parent’s backyard.

Claire and I fished at Trax Farm, my uncle and I had some good talks, I drove my mum back and forth to the train each day (so I could have the car), etc… My brother-in-law, Danny, and I installed lighting on my parent’s porch one day and another day we took Claire kayaking, after Donna arrived for two weeks in PA.

While there, we drove to Warren, PA for the fourth of July. I first made this trip 16 years ago with Donna when we first dated, and it was good to see so much of her family, including a cousin we’d not seen since our engagement party in 1999.

I shot many abandoned buildings and captured the history of Pittsburgh from the old farm homesteads out near Bridgeville to asylums in Scotts and New Castle to an old iron mill in Braddock. I also photographed the Strip District and Southside before turning the camera on the families.

I’d never live there again, but I know the true love I have for a city I once took for granted and now miss from time to time. A city that still holds my heart.