Paola Corso

Location: 215 17th St, parlor floor (btw 4th & 5th Ave.)
Website:  Paola Corso
Twitter: Paola Corso
Facebook: Paola Corso

I'm a poet and photographer born and raised in Pittsburgh, a city with more public stairways than any other in the country.  Steps inspired me to return to photography after many years. I had studied it at San Francisco State University and was a reporter and photojournalist in the Bay Area, employing traditional darkroom methods to develop film and make prints. 

I am fascinated with creating images of steps and stairways that feature a compelling pattern of the horizontal meeting the vertical, a spiritual journey to elevate ourselves, and a struggle to ascend the hierarchy of a stratified society. 

My current body of work, “Steppin,” is photographed and altered digitally. It includes black and white close-ups that draw attention to the structures themselves and their architectural beauty as well as color landscapes that celebrate what I have come to see as vertical bridges.  Steps that were originally built so steelworkers like my Italian immigrant grandfather and father living in the hills could walk down to the mills along the river.  

I aspire to cross these vertical bridges too. More than to reach a destination. It's the coming together that I want to capture in my photography and poetry.

Connections in the landscape. Connections we make with each other. That middle ground where we meet.