Greater Philly Photo Day invites every perspective

What happens in the Philly region during a 24-hour period? You can get a few thousand glimpses when people in the city and surrounding suburbs take photographs of whatever they want on Greater Philly Photo Day. The annual event “empowers people to photograph the images that make their region great.”

Any locals with a camera, including phone cameras, can capture something to share their point of view during the one-day event. The only rules: All submissions must be taken on Friday, October 9 and must be uploaded to the PPAC website by Wednesday, October 14.

Part of a collective voice

Philly Photo Day was created by the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) as a celebration of its first anniversary in 2010. It has grown each year since. The inaugural event captured 300 photos; last year brought 1,900 submissions. Originally, the event featured only people, places, and things in Philadelphia. Now, photographers can take pictures in New Castle County, Delaware; Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Mercer, and Salem counties in New Jersey; and Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania. Greater Philly Photo Day also offers educational outreach and engagement — the organization supplies 275 digital cameras to people as part of 20 visiting artist-taught photography workshops, for free, in community centers, Philadelphia public schools, and regional homeless shelters.

Sarah Stolfa, founder and executive director of PPAC, which is dedicated to fostering the study, practice, and appreciation of contemporary photography, believes the event gives people a voice: “Photography is so democratic and omnipresent,” she said. “People can be active participants and makers rather than just viewers.”

She’s especially excited to include people who don’t think of themselves as photographers. “We’re all creative. The arts are important to all of us, and they enrich all of our lives,” she said. “It’s a day when anybody and everybody who’s willing has an opportunity to engage in a public art project, to be part of this collective voice of what the region is on this particular day.” It’s an uncensored reflection of Greater Philadelphia area.

What happens to the photos?

PPAC likes to take artwork beyond the gallery walls, she said. To that end, submitted photos are made accessible in myriad ways. Some will appear on billboards; others will be featured on transit posters. Previously, photos were exhibited outside in Dilworth Park; this year, photos will be exhibited beginning November 12 at the PPAC gallery, 1400 N. American St., Philadelphia. And like last year, this year’s submissions will be viewable online. New this year: Photos will be mapped so people can see what pictures were taken in certain areas. Also, people can search for pictures by their friends’ names.

Stolfa hopes that people who aren’t as into photography as she and others are will come to experience the art form in a new way. “I think of photographs as metaphors,” she said. “They have the capacity to take something spectacular or mundane and give us the opportunity to reflect ourselves on that, to have our own interpretation on what we’re looking at.”

And though “not every photographer is an artist, everyone is artful,” she said. “I like this idea of everybody on this day going out and thinking about their photography and their city at once. Everyone can engage with the arts and photography.”

At right: a 2014 submission from Elena Bouvier.