Looking Down: Photographs From the Sidewalks of Hyde Park, Boston

by Dan Auiler, Robert Jones

For any city dweller, there is nothing more ubiquitous than the sidewalk. Nothing is really more understood and intimately remembered, but generally not something held up to much real aesthetic examination. We know our concrete footpaths implicitly, and without looking directly we can sense when we’ve rounded the corner onto an unknown street. Photographer Robert Jones takes the reader on a quiet, yet serendipitous, tour of the hidden treasures found on the sidewalks of Hyde Park. Through his perceptive eye, Jones finds that poignant gems are to be found among the ephemera - bottle caps, broken glass, sand, weeds, sewer grates, manhole covers, gardening tools, and picket fences of this suburban neighborhood, tucked away in a corner of Boston, Massachusetts. As celebrated author Dan Auiler notes in his insightful essay, "There are no people present in the photographs, yet I would suggest these images include us in a way that keep these images from being desolate and The sidewalk as still life. This is no easy trick."

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 3, 2012