Poet’s Corner is the community name of my Berkeley, CA neighborhood. Exploring streets that include Poe, Chaucer, Byron, Browning and others in the pre-dawn hours afforded me a perspective generally unseen; empty streets and a quiet anticipation of the day to come. There is an occupied presence to the homes and I found them full of potential; waiting for the residents to stir and life to ramp up with the rising sun. There is an anticipatory feel on the streets and I relished being there with my iPhone before the sounds and activities of the day began.

This project started during the Covid-19 pandemic when the population was forced indoors, and in being out there on the streets I felt simultaneously liberated and constrained by the solitude and palpable fear. The launch point was my curiosity with the dramatic tree shadows on the streets and sidewalks, though it evolved into a more emotional approach as I became more attuned to Poet’s Corner. Long experience with photographing at night with its inky shadows and built-in mystery and drama informed my process.

The Poet’s Corner project is also about the boundary of public and private. The exterior walls are public, the landscaping is public, and the cars. kid’s toys, and delivered newspapers are public. The other side of the drawn curtains, however, are intensely private. Speculation about the lives homed here is fueled by the stirrings of the occupants and the occasional fleeting shadows crossing the windows.

What I hope to accomplish with this work is a portrait of my neighborhood in the first-light hours of stillness coupled with the cultural consequences of a pandemic. There is hope in the dawn.