America Through the Glass

A road corner in South Philadelphia normally exists in a totally different area from the shores of the Tidal Basin in Washington, but this spring they share more than falling cherry blossoms: Each is empty save for a couple of lonely figures wandering in acts of braveness or defiance. America seems to be totally different without individuals. It seems to be totally different from behind the wheel of a automotive, the one risk-free means of transportation nowadays. Principally deserted road furnishings like bus shelters appears already to be passing from bustle to blight. Monuments stand bare in sharp aid, like symbols of loss and destruction in a poster for a post-apocalyptic warfare film.

Photographer M. Scott Mahaskey—himself a former embed in warfare zones in Afghanistan and Iraq—educated his digital camera on a unique type of hazard zone, this one his own residence territory of Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Seen from the same passenger-side home windows as in his armored automobiles, these once-familiar landscapes took on new psychic dimensions, directly forbidding and welcoming. And identical to in Afghanistan and Iraq, he discovered more than a touch of reassuring humanity in the mild spring air. —Peter Canellos