Temple University Special Collections Present Philadelphia Unfolded

Dozens of photographs, curated by Anne Mosher and Melissa VandeBurgt of Temple’s Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), encircle the exhibition space in a collaged band. Six images have been reimagined by pop-up book artist Fu so that, with the touch of a finger, visitors can open them, deepening the interaction.

Philly’s family album

SCRC holdings are like Philadelphia’s family album. The center includes rare photographs from the Urban Archives, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Philadelphia Jewish Archive, and the university archive Templana.

Uncaptioned, the pictures test viewers’ local knowledge and memory: When did people dress like that? Where is/was that building? What’s happening here?

The mural is a mosaic of Philadelphia through time. Temple students—men wearing shirts and ties, women in miniskirts and knee socks—buy soft pretzels at the Bell Tower. Two men wearing Muslim kufi sit with an open Koran. Millersburg, PA’s Bonnie Doon Drum & Bugle Corps is on the march, kilts flapping, and a boy blows a shofar as long as he is tall. Student nurses in white caps and aprons pose with oxygen equipment. Elderly Civil War veterans proudly stand with children born decades after their service, and 16 smiling women with bobbed hair sit in a scull on the Schuylkill, ready to row.

Our penchant for protest

Photographs also document the city’s penchant for protesting: a Native American grips a mic to speak: behind him, a Bicentennial-style American flag hangs upside-down, signaling distress. Somber Black marchers in coats and ties file past Girard College’s wrought iron perimeter, watched by an equally long line of white police as they protest Girard’s policy of admitting only “poor, white, male orphans.” A group poses next to a bus with a banner reading “Negro Trade Union Leadership Council/Jewish Labor Committee”. And on City Hall’s apron, veterans—men and women of all ages—protest the Vietnam War.

Chinatown then and now

Evocative as still images are, Fu intensifies the experience. A monochromatic portrait of Wen Teh Chang, an adorable toddler waving a tiny American flag, opens to reveal the same child superimposed on Chinatown today, bursting with color and people of all ethnicities.

Fu also addresses Chinatown’s ongoing battle to protect its turf. A 1970s image of protestors manning a barricade to halt the controversial Vine Street Expressway, the construction of which amputated part of Chinatown from Center City, is combined with a more recent, successful battle. A slide mechanism reveals a photograph of a bright red banner: “WE WON...NO MORE ARENA!“

Christian and South Streets

Another fold-out illustrates the significance of the Christian Street Historic District to the Black community. Closed, the image depicts the historic Presbyterian Church at 16th and Christian Streets, built in 1906 as First African Baptist. Open, it reveals six Black children, dressed in their 1950s churchgoing best, stepping out from a contemporary view of a historic marker celebrating the Christian Street YMCA, the first Black Y to have its own building.

Fu brings to life images of South Street fishmonger Joseph Posnan offering fresh butterfish to the camera, and a group eating Bassett’s ice cream in the Reading Terminal Market. Butterfish leap away from Posnan, swimming down the wall to freedom, while at the Bassett’s counter, a woman wearing a cloche hat smiles over her shoulder as two boys vie for the first lick of a double-scoop cone. Open, the ice cream shifts into color and moves closer, as if inviting us to have a taste.

Making Noodle Mountain

Before visitors notice the mural, they encounter Fu’s Noodle Mountain (2024), which dominates the space. It’s a volcanic installation of curling, bright-yellow strands sauced with symbols of the Chinese immigrant experience. Fu’s parents came to America in the 1950’s, and she recalls the spaghetti and meatballs she enjoyed, like most American children, but also remembers the Chinese noodles her father made. Those were a common dish in northern China, where he’d been born.

When Fu was growing up, assimilation was still emphasized. Curious about her family background, she visited China after college, spending a few years teaching English and exploring. Back at home, while pursuing a master’s in photography, she discovered pop-up books.

Fu described the wonder of a three-dimensional scene emerging from a two-dimensional book for Craft in America, and has written, “My work grew out of a personal search for identity and belonging...I use the mechanics of the pop-up book to give physical form to this process of discovery.”

Noodle Mountain’s design was inspired by a children’s song, On Top of Spaghetti, and the cover art on the eponymous album. In Fu’s hands, it became a monumental pop-up book opened by a Gulliver-sized crank. Noodle Mountain sits on a table fabricated by multidisciplinary artist Brad Litwin, meant to be reminiscent of the Fu’s family table. The crank recalls the salmon processing machine that displaced early-20th century Chinese cannery workers.

Fu’s symbolic sauce incorporates red for blood spilled in clashes between Chinese and American workers, flames for Chinatowns burned, leaping salmon for Chinese fish processors, and crescents of track representing the Chinese laborers who built transcontinental railroads. The mountain is capped with a black braid, like those worn by Chinese workers.

The stories in every picture

Adjacent to the main exhibit, in the SCRC Reading Room, are cases of journals and other items detailing Fu’s travels and process. Included in the items, curated by Kim Tully, is Golden Lotus, which recalls the horrific process of foot-binding, in which Chinese girls’ feet were wrapped to stunt growth, forming them into 3.9-inch crescents. Foot-binding was outlawed in 1912. Fu created a blossom with 3.9-inch petals bearing x-ray images from a bound foot and her own normal foot.

Philadelphia Unfolded underscores that every picture tells several stories, if only observers take time to discover them.

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