Jesus and Young Boy (left) was taken in Baja California, Mexico, in 1990. This is a small restaurant on the road between Tijuana and Ensenada Mexico.  Lady With a Cat (right) was taken in Kensington Philadelphia, in 2006. The lady is a prostitute, and this is the room where she brings her Johns.

ABOUT ME

            I was born in Salisbury MD in 1943. Salisbury is a  small city, then 15,000 people. It was the second largest on the Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) peninsula, then a remote, rural, largely agricultural area east of the Chesapeake Bay. I moved to West Philly (Philadelphia PA) in 1956. I lived there until I joined the Marine Corps in 1961. I served twenty years including the Vietnam War.

 

           I moved  to Los Angeles County for 6 years after I got out of the Marines in 1981.  I lived in Southern California  from1977 until 1999.  Mostly in the desert east of Los Angeles.  I was primarily a landscape photographer.  In 1981 two of my friends introduced me to street photography, Donald Bernard,.http-::mysite.verizon.net:donaldbernard:.webloc and Willie Middlebrook,  web.mac.com/middlebrook.   We walked the streets of Los Angeles, and they shared their passion for capturing what was happening on the street, stuff I had never seen. Dick Sanders  www.dicksanders.com introduced me to Mexican border towns, in turn I introduced him to street photography in LA.  Together we visited Tijuana and Mexicali. When I came back to Philadelphia to visit friends and family, one of my cousins took me to Kensington, a neighborhood just north and east of Center City.  He told me that people were afraid to come to Kensington, because people who visited would get mugged or murdered. Kensington was always in or on the news.  We took the El train and got off at the Market-Frankford elevated subway at Somerset and Kensington and walked around.  It was a run-down area with lots of crime. People didn’t feel the need to hide what they were doing, people were shooting up on the streets. Somerset and Kensington was and still is the most notorious drug corner in Philly, with lots of prostitutes, cars pulling over to the curb, young girls jumping in, and the street littered with used hypodermic needles. A lots of people in this section of town are HIV-positive. It was fascinating and the people were interesting. I told my cousin that if I lived in Philly, I would go to Kensington to photograph these unseen people.

         Later that year, I moved to Philly to be closer to my family. The first thing I did was take the El to the Somerset stop and start walking around. I walked the streets, talked to people who seemed to be invisible to the general public.  For almost ten years I’ve photographed these almost invisible and unseen people while being visible in their environment.  The people I have photographed and met see me as a part of their neighborhood. They see me on their  streets from time to time.   I make sure when they see me  that I always have a stack of photographs with me.  Each time I go, I make an effort to give the people who let me photograph them, a photograph.  Since 1999 I’ve taken approximately 4,000 pictures.

          

MY PHILOSOPHY

          I don’t want to change the people and places I photograph or judge them. It’s like that sign when you enter a National Park: “Take only photographs. Leave only footprints.” I just meet people and document their lives. I like to photograph the people no one else likes to photograph. Each person’s picture seems to say “Look at me. I am a person.” I’m proud that the connection -- their humanity -- comes through in the images.

          I shoot about half film and half digital. I use a wide angle lens primarily because, it allows me to get up close and it helps keep the relationships more personal.

I shoot almost exclusively black and white.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THIS SITE

          These are street photographs taken from 1981 to today. The early pictures are from LA and Mexican border towns (1981-1999). The Philadelphia pictures are from 1999 to the present day. The black wall pictures were taken over several days in each of 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 of people walking by a black wall on 5th St between Main and Los Angeles Streets in LA.     For your comments I can be reached at rondcorbin@me.com  also at  rdeancor@comcast.net

          Thank you Steve for all of your help . Also to Ronald Jr who has brought me into the 21st Century.   www.ronnies-world.com  My Friends at www.webbcam.net