Portland. What can one say about Portland?

Many things, of course. First, and foremost, it’s a beautiful city, especially when viewing downtown from across the Willamette River at night when the water is calm, and reflects the city lights like a mirror. I have watched it change from being a city with the heart of a small town to a lumbering behemoth with gang warfare and a mass homeless population. It is still a beautiful city, but I won’t be going out alone onto the Burnside Bridge at 2:00 AM ever again.

Southeast Portland will always retain a piece of my heart. I lived there from 1992 to 2015. I know the streets, the restaurants, and special areas like Hawthorne, Alberta and Belmont very well. I roamed them after dark when I worked the graveyard shift. On weekends, when I had some time to myself (I found it very hard to sleep at night on weekends) I went out with my cameras, and sought out the well lit, but desolate street scenes. It was always best to not set up for a 11-minute exposure on 8×10 film while a lot of people are around. I called that project “The Night Shift”. I took a series of 8×10 pictures, and made them into contact prints, which I framed and exhibited around the area.  The Night Shift took me to more parts of the city than the Southeast, but that’s the area I concentrated on.

Click on the image to go to the gallery.