Georgetown Steps

Author's Comments

Most people in Georgetown walk right past the top of these stairs without noticing them. That is part of the appeal. The steps drop sharply from Prospect Street down to M, cut between two brick walls that hold the neighborhood above like a retaining seam, and unless you know what you are looking for, the entrance reads as an alley rather than a landmark. The film that made them famous did not make them crowded. I have stood at the bottom on a Saturday afternoon in October and had the frame entirely to myself for ten minutes at a stretch. The photograph is at the base looking up. Seventy-five steps compress into a steep vertical that the eye cannot quite resolve, and the Victorian rowhouses on either side lean in and close the composition. Late afternoon in fall is when this works. The low light rakes down the stairwell from the west, the foliage from the side gardens spills a little warmth into the frame, and the stone goes from gray to something closer to amber in the last half hour before sunset. It is not a grand photograph. It is a quiet one, and slightly strange, and it belongs to a version of Georgetown that predates the shopping district at the bottom of the hill. Bring a wider lens than feels necessary. Let someone walk down through the frame if they happen by. The scale only reads when there is a human figure inside it.

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