2025 “List”
In 2024, I started a new photo series. Dubbed “the list,” it consisted of images I’d purposefully sought to make based on a long running tab I had going. Essentially a docket of scribbles, screenshots, map coordinates, and reference images all detailing things I wanted to eventually get around to documenting.
By the end of 2024, I was really happy with the photographs I made, but the file in my phone called “potential things to shoot” seemingly never stops growing. So, in an effort to keep with it, here’s the 2025 edition—a post that I plan to regularly come back to and update throughout the year.
Last Updated: July 21, 2025
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Last Updated: July 21, 2025 —
March 31, 2025 Entries:
Cappel’s party supply store in Cincinnati during Winter Storm Blair.
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Shepard Fairey wheatpaste in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati.
In the fall of 2024, renowned artist Shepard Fairey debuted a mural with Cincinnati’s ArtWorks organization. Described as “…part of ArtWorks’ nonpartisan ‘Get Out the Vote’ project to inspire civic engagement,” the painting of a permanent mural was also accompanied by several of Fairey’s wheatpaste installations (which feature similar themes and messaging). In the days after their placement, just a few weeks before the 2024 US presidential election, several of the wheatpastes were vandalized. What remains of these pieces are simply scraps with the above example feeling particularly poignant.
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View from the The Mercantile Library, a downtown Cincinnati institution.
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Sawyer Point Stairs, Cincinnati:
April 15, 2025 Entry:
Mercantile Building Stairs, Cincinnati:
I shot the first photo on a random whim and ended up not liking the quality from my phone. Went back a few days later to make the second photograph with a real camera and ended up not liking the crop.
So, I walked the dog again a few hours later and photographed it once more:
Something about those stairs.
April 18, 2025 Entry:
Honestly, when it comes to the above photographs: I prefer the first composition, but that’s not what’s important here. Rather, it’s at this moment (2:11 a.m. on 4/18/25 (the day before I turn 36)) that I realized the 1999 song “Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out) is by a group named Citizen King and not, in fact, by Sublime.
April 24, 2025 Entries:
8th St. Cincinnati.
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Cincinnati Streetcar:
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The hotel built around the same time as the now-demolished “sculpture park” I wrote about.
May 16, 2025 Entry:
This building/street in Cincinnati’s Clifton Heights neighborhood felt like a midwestern version of San Francisco.
June 29, 2025 Entries:
The ad on the side of this Cincinnati bus stop is saying: “I will survive.”
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For years while working and living in this neighborhood, this particular sign frame held a canvas advertisement for a gyro spot owned by a cantankerous gentleman named “Uncle Mo.” When Mo’s closed down, this tax service sign was revealed again. Via some quick googling, it seems that the family tax service business is no longer around, but is fondly remembered by its loyal customers..
July 1, 2025 Entry:
Unique series of road signs. West End, Cincinnati.
July 21, 2025 Entries:
4th & Main, Downtown Cincinnati:
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12th St. in OTR/Pendleton:
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Downtown Cincinnati’s Healthline Fitness Course:
I’ve been passing by these signs the last few years and eventually realized that they correspond with some structures a few blocks away.
Debuting in the mid-1980s, The Healthline Fitness Course was intended to be a series of self-guided exercise routes which would direct participants around various local attractions. I have a vague memory of one “exercise cluster” having existed at Sawyer Point, but as far as I know—the only station still remaining is the one seen below—sitting between the County Jail and the casino.
What’s notable about these signs are the landmarks they highlight, many of which are now long gone such as defunct department stores and the multipurpose stadium that was blown up in favor of two modern replacements.
Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field is highlighted at the bottom left. The former home of the Reds and Bengals was imploded in 2002 when new stadiums were constructed. Meanwhile, the “Coliseum” to the right still remains, but has changed names several times over the years.
I made these photographs this morning while walking the dog and kept thinking that I should really go for a run, but instead I’m sitting here watching 1987’s “The Running Man.” Close enough and this film is a classic.
Last Updated: July 21, 2025
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Last Updated: July 21, 2025 —
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