On a bright early-spring day in March 1973, I was scouting the streets and parks of South Baltimore—something I often did in those days—looking for things to photograph. 
Everything in that part of the city had (still has) an emotional pull for me. I love it all—area ways (covered passages between the row homes, aka “sallie ports”), alleys, damaged garbage cans, old and new buildings, and the tiny fenced-in concrete back yards. I also love the urban animals—pigeons lined up military style on telephone wires or strolling the side walks as if they owned them, packs of free running dogs that seemed to lope along at an angle, like John Wayne looking for action (these days you only see dogs on leashes), and curious cats, always alone, exploring their neighborhood. The people, too, of course, I love seeing them—vegetable and fruit vendors working door-to-door from horse-drawn wagons (still to be seen, though rarer every year), neighborhood characters on the streets of the shopping district of Charles and Light Streets, shoppers and stall operators in and around Cross Street Market, and, of course, street kids everywhere. (They often run in packs, too.)
On that particular day in 1973 I happened upon a group of four kids, one boy and three girls, playing what appeared to be a game of “King of the Hill” on a large mound of raw dirt.
This was in Federal Hill Park, a massive mound of grass covered dirt itself, rising in two tiers above the Southern rim of Baltimore Harbor. Federal Hill, the highest natural location in downtown Baltimore, provides a spot from which many photographers—pros and snap shooters alike—frame our favorite city skyline. The girls were a cute stair-step trio (sisters or cousins of the boy, or his neighbors?). But the boy, striking in looks, clothing and behavior, was the one that caught my eye. He was a character straight out of a novel by Charles Dickens, what with his shaggy hair, snaggle teeth, his tattered second- or third-hand coat, dirty horizontal stripped shirt, and equally filthy pants tucked into too-large engineer boots. But it was his behavior that truly impressed me. He was sprite-like, a free spirit, a dirt-mound dancer of total abandon—absolutely zero inhibitions in front of my camera—the incarnation of joyful Id. It was easy to see that all four kids loved the attention I gave them, loved being photographed, but the boy especially so. 
He pranced and strutted and at one point even began to sing for me. When I discovered those kids, I was very near the end of a long day of shooting and was down to the last few frames of my last 36-exposure roll. After grabbing the three shots you see here, I pretended I had more unexposed film in the camera. I kept clicking away, changing my position, setting up different “angles,” moving around the dirt mound in my own little dance, responding to and in perfect time with the boy’s movements. Never mind that I was out of film—I couldn’t stop, wouldn’t dare stop—we were both having too much fun.
Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.
