Justin Fenton: A visual diary of a police reporter
Sun reporter Justin Fenton travels throughout the city as he covers Baltimore’s crime stories. During his travels and while at crime scenes, he often documents the people, buildings and vistas of the city with his cellphone camera. His images show the contrast of urban decay and the beauty of street art. You see the pain of those who deal with the results of needless violence and those who approach their everyday life with humor and humility.
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- At crime scenes, where we are often pushed back by police who won’t or can’t speak to us, I am constantly trying to find a unique vantage point so I can bring something, anything back. This recent shooting in the Remington neighborhood occurred in the middle of a block, and both ends of the street were blocked off. So it made sense to walk around and come in through an alley directly facing the residence where the shooting occurred. I was snapping photos when this officer began to emerge. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- As I drive through the city, sometimes I see things that cause me to slam on the brakes and pull over and this was one of those moments. On my way back from doing a story with MTA police in Northeast Baltimore, these men were playing a game of chess on the steps of a vacant. I asked if I could take their picture; the man in the leather coat obliged, and the other didn’t even break his gaze from the chess game. The man on the left ended up asking me to stay for a moment, trotted to his big, shiny pickup truck, and he handed me a copy of a book he had self-published, which seemed part-memoir, part religious screed. He asked me what my name was, and on the front cover made an inscription: “To: Justin. Thank U!” (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- This photo depicts the former Goetze’s Meats, which was a sausage and pork plant. This is one-side of what was a walkway that connected the buildings on either side of Sinclair Lane. Now it is just a gaping hole, and a reminder of how many manufacturing jobs have left the city. Someone commented that the man walking through the photo had ruined the shot, but I like how his presence helps scale the building. There were plans floated a decade ago to turn the building into a $450 million media school, but obviously nothing happened. So it sits, waiting for the next big idea. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- There are enormous swaths of the city that are decrepit, abandoned, trashed and just plain sad. This block actually falls in the middle of an area that is not completely abandoned. But in many ways it stands out to me as perhaps the most depressing spot in the city. It’s a tiny, one-block street, called Lansing Avenue. According to property records, this is the street’s only block, and none of the houses are inhabited. The perpendicular street, the 1600 block of Bethel St., is not in much better shape. When people think of “The Wire,” this is what they see. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- A Honda logo in a gravel parking lot. I like what a lot of people are able to do with texture through simple pictures on their iPhones, and wanted to see how this would look. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- Medics no doubt have a stressful job, trying to render aid to victims and get them to the nearest trauma center. But they also frequently leave behind their medical gloves (and the police often leave remnants of crime scene tape). The glove was perched this way when I found it, which would appear deliberate. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- Willie “Mr. Joe” Loyd was working on several carpentry projects right on the sidewalk, and said he was making furniture for children. He called this his “sculpture” and posed for a picture. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- Another example of wheatpaste art on a vacant building, and another that I believe is the work of the street artist named Sorta. This one is in East Baltimore, and was gone the last time I went by. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the short shelf-life for wheatpaste, or whether residents or kids tear them down. One of my favorite wheatpastes, by Gaia on Greenmount Avenue, was inexplicably painted over, despite the art being the only appealing thing about a building in awful shape. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- This home is in the Greenmount West neighborhood, where there are many interesting art projects taking place in lieu of actual development. The chipping paint on so many of the city’s crumbling housing stock almost always makes the homes look more interesting. In a similar picture taken in another part of town, a red brick wall with chipping bright blue paint was accompanied by an aging sign that read “Anyone damaging this property will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- Baltimore doesn’t have much of a street musician scene, as far as I’m aware. I don’t know this gentleman’s name or his story, but I threw him a couple bucks as thanks for letting me take his picture. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- In driving through South Baltimore, I have noticed a cartoon sign on a tiny train station in Riverside, welcoming riders to Locust Point and reminding them to be safe. I love the sign, and have wanted to get a picture of it but in scouring Google aerial maps and exploring the area on foot, I simply can’t find any access points. This photo was taken from under I-95 while trying to get in place for the picture I really wanted. Maybe one day… (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- I’m partial to the city’s street artists and the work they do making the city’s endless supply of blighted properties look interesting. I think there can be a twisted beauty in the ruin, and an ironic or thought-provoking wheatpaste can really add punctuation. This is at the intersection of West Lanvale and North Monroe streets. The wheat paste is by the artist named Sorta, who from my travels is the most prolific wheat paste artist in the city right now. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- This photo was taken while walking around the scene of a shooting, and I would find myself back at the lot in the background months later when a man named Anthony Anderson was killed during a police stop. Phone booths are almost all gone at this point, and those that remain rarely are functional. The combination of the intact phone booth in a block where everything else has been knocked down, and the fact that it apparently is in good order, made for an odd sight. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- This picture was taken outside of the funeral for Marquis Jones on North Avenue. I asked the man, who I believe was a cousin, if I could photograph his headband, and mostly expected he would take it off and show it to me. He allowed me to photograph it with him wearing it, and his expression captures the mood of the day. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- I was taking a photo of the birds poking their heads out of this building, and one of them flew out as the picture was being taken. The photo also loaded sideways, which was not initially intended but actually ended up looking more interesting to me. I kept it that way. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- When we heard that a police recruit had been seriously wounded in an accidental shooting during a training drill at an abandoned state hospital, I wanted to check out just where exactly such drills could be taking place. The entire campus is creepy and decaying, and appeared overrun with geese. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- Baltimore’s aging “Greatest City in America” benches offer a lot of moments of irony. Regarding this picture, it looked to me like the bench had been caught up in a tornado and deposited somewhere far more suburban. This bench sits by itself 5800 block of Frankford Avenue at a bus stop, near a development of fairly new homes in Northeast Baltimore, and yes, the photo was taken while wandering around the outskirts of a shooting scene. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- This looks like leftover junk, part of the mix of old and new in the southern ring of the Inner Harbor, but its placement is quite deliberate. According to the Museum of Industry, it’s called the Governor McLane, an oyster police boat built in Philadelphia in 1884, and was involved in cannon-and-rifle fights with oyster pirates. “Oddly enough, in 1906 she was used to transport an African American male named William Lee from Baltimore to Smith Island for his execution,” Catherine Scott Dunkes told me. “The reason that he was secreted away is that threats were made to kidnap and kill the prisoner by ordinary citizens.” The hull was found underwater between the General Ship Repair and Domino Sugar buildings, it’s now a home for the ducks that hang out there, she says. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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- I found this hole in the side of a rowhome while trudging around the scene of a daytime shooting in West Baltimore. My imagination wandered trying to think what could have created such a hole. Commenters on this photo instantly thought of the Kool-Aid man. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun)
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