This series of photographs document the life and deterioration of ten posters that were installed along the Schuylkill Banks path between the Market and Walnut Street bridges. The posters are 5’’x5’’’ and made of environmentally safe, dissolvable paper. I used flour-based glue to adhere the posters to cement, stone, metal, and tree bark along the river (as pictured in the following slides). Each poster features a drawing of the Philadelphia city limits along with the courses of the Schuylkill River, Mill Creek, and Wissahickon Creek. I’ve placed Thomas Moore’s poem, “Ode to the Schuylkill,” written in 1824, within the outline of the map.
This project is intended to bring a relevant work of writing out of its resting place within a digital archive and to display it to those who currently “rove” the banks of the Schuylkill. The hope is that this particular poem will draw attention to the beauty and melancholy of the river, as well as to its physical permanence. Perhaps a small part of a vast digital archive can experience an analog renaissance.
