This is Sonny Holiday. If you've ever strolled South street in Philadelphia during the fairer of days you might have seen him preforming his street magic acts with his black wayfarer style glasses frames with no lenses, and some variation of suit pants, jacket and vest with a hat, tennis shoes and a knee pad on his left knee.

His art is slight of hand and he relies on the passer-by's moods to fill his hat at the end of each act.

When I first started shooting street, he was one of my first subjects I captured. I have probably photographed him more than any other subject on many occasions.

When shooting street performers, it seems easy, almost like cheating, because they expect you to photograph them, or if they don't, they should. You can take a photo of a street performer, but the hard part, in my opinion is taking a photo of that person, and truly capturing that person and what they do, what kind of person they are, the feeling they give you. With Sonny Holiday, I have tried on many occasions, and perhaps come close, but never close enough to achieving this.

This day, I feel I have truly captured him. What you will see in the next few days will be some photos from that day of him. Although, with him I do not believe it is possible to perfectly capture him in a way which fully conveys how he is and what he does, I think these photos are almost as good as it gets as far as that goes.

#2 [link]

Infos
Canon EOS-3~35mm~Ilford XP2@320~neg scan

And you may remember him from the past in my gallery. If you browse, you will find an old photo or two.