I have been photographing in the streets of Baltimore since the late 1970’s, charmed by the dynamics of people, families and stoop-sitters I encountered against a tapestry of modest working-class houses. These are scenes that evoke some of my earliest memories of another city – the one where I was born, Cleveland.

As a stranger and camera-toting white woman, I don’t expect to be welcomed everywhere, but I can usually find a way to blend in or be a benign presence.

Photographing Freddie Gray’s neighborhood one year after his death and the subsequent protests and riot was a weighty assignment. I felt humbled pointing my camera at the mere surfaces of a neighborhood whose struggles are so vast.

These photos, taken mostly during two spring afternoons, are small observations of random moments amounting to a glimpse of Sandtown-Winchester and Penn-North.

Helena Hicks, who grew up in Sandtown-Winchester many decades ago, accompanied me on one of my visits. She despaired at the crumbling houses and the piles of trash, commenting, “Sheila Dixon changing trash pick-up to once weekly was not OK!”

We passed many new murals on the brick walls of old, often crumbling rowhouses. “That’s so it looks like the city cares, but it’s window dressing and has no lasting value,” Helena said.

The Lillian S. Jones Recreation Center on Stricker Street, named for her sister, is in need of repairs and additional staffing. She’s perplexed that a door connecting the Gilmor Elementary School to the rec center stays locked every day, forcing young children to walk a good two blocks, around the school, to get to aftercare.

Helena pointed out to me the isolation of the Gilmor Homes. She remembers how the neighborhood used to be with nightclubs, theaters, live music. What’s now Red Fox Liquors on Pennsylvania Avenue was a nightclub where Ethel Ennis sang. “It was a lively, respectable place,” she said.

Passing a small park, she comments, “We used to sleep in that park on a hot summer night in the 50’s. Wouldn’t do that now.”

We chatted with an older man on a stoop. He and his wife, who had died just days before, raised their 13 children in a tiny rowhouse across the street. Every year he buys a load of burgers to grill and throws a block party to bring neighbors together.

“People need to relax and enjoy life together,” he said. He recalls when the recreation wagon would come by the neighborhood in his youth, bringing games.

His comments reminded me that last fall I toured the Arch Social Club, Baltimore’s oldest club intended to create fellowship and community for men. Given that the establishment sits at a place the world now knows as the epicenter of protest and rioting, it’s good to remember what the club represented.

“It’s not about drinking,” my tour guide told me. “Men come here for each other’s company. They play games, listen to music, talk to each other.”

Returning alone on another sunny April afternoon last weekend, I found the intersection of North and Pennsylvania hopping with police cars and an ambulance loading a young man on a stretcher. I raised my camera but was asked politely by a man on the street, a friend of the man in the ambulance, not to take pictures.

Many of the local women I encountered that day were tolerant of my presence and my camera, allowing photos and sometimes giving me email addresses for a copy.

The children were especially eager to be photographed – a young boy smiling in the sunlight, a gorgeous baby girl beaming under her hair ribbon, an older boy shooting hoops. “I’m here every afternoon if you want to come back for more photos,” he offered.

But most of the older boys and men I approached that day declined to be photographed. One teenager spat angrily at me; later, another threw sticks and stones. I imagined their hostility involved a weariness with publicity that changes nothing for them.

As I photographed the boy shooting hoops, I sat on the ground for a low angle, and that’s when the sticks began landing near me, thrown by a group of young men in the park.

The boy yelled at them to stop and I kept shooting, but the sticks continued to fly. Finally a rock hit my leg and stung – then I moved on.

The basketball park was flooded by the sounds of music from a nearby church service. I wandered over to the church to escape more rock throwing and photographed some of the women there.

These older mothers and grandmothers seemed to pack a hefty dose of strength and heart, decked out in joyful outfits and coordinated hats. “We can hear your music all over the park,” I told the pastor.

“Don’t matter if you come inside or stay out,” he smiled. “Wherever you are, sooner or later, God will get you.”

– Jennifer Bishop has lived and photographed in Baltimore since 1975. She published a weekly stand-alone photograph in Baltimore’s City Paper for 17 years.

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Here are some more of Bishop’s photos: