Michael Yatsko took this featured photo from Wormleysburg.
Get ready to see the city through a different lens – or, should we say, four different lenses?
The Art Association of Harrisburg’s hyper-local, four-man photography show “All Access Harrisburg” is opening Friday, Dec. 5. It features 80 shots, roughly 20 a piece, by photographers William Hicks, Dr. Eliseo Rosario, Ron Steficek and Michael Yatsko.
“It’s centered around Harrisburg and her inhabitants,” said Nathan Foster, the association’s director of exhibitions.
Many photos spotlight well-known city landmarks.
Multiple shots of the Broad Street Market’s stone building offer the viewer a friendly, familiar sight. Photographer Hicks also captured the brick building’s post-fire devastation with two large aerial shots of the dilapidated structure, taken by drone.
Hicks said his photos in the exhibit mark a reexamination of the place he grew up after returning from Bangkok, Thailand, where he lived from 2019 to 2024.
“It was a difficult transition coming back,” he said, particularly because a lot had changed during the pandemic.
When he came home, he noticed small businesses struggling and the city’s noticeable absence of state workers, now working remotely.
“It just seemed like Harrisburg had lost some of its charm that it used to have,” he said. “That’s what I was searching for in these photos. Reminding myself it is still a beautiful place, even though it feels different.”
Yatsko said many of the shots he submitted are a tribute to his love for the city.
He’s particularly proud of a shot that took years of planning to line up: one of the sun shining through the Star of David atop Beth El Temple. He used sky-tracking apps to find out when the sun would be directly behind the Jewish synagogue’s Star, narrowing it down to a two-day time span.
“When you do all the planning, sometimes the weather just doesn’t work out, or I’m not available, but this one actually worked out perfectly,” he said.
Another well-planned photo features a large crescent moon glowing behind the State Capitol’s dome. For this shot, Yatsko tracked the moon’s stage and location and shot it between 2 and 3 a.m. along S. Front Street in Wormleysburg.
“In order to make the moon appear super big like that, you have to get as far away from the subject as possible,” he explained.
In intimate, black-and-white shots, many of Steficek’s images feature the people of Harrisburg themselves, often in well-known locations. One captures a train passenger waiting on the wooden benches at Harrisburg’s train station; another, a spectator on a bench at Riverfront Park.
“He’s really good at this subtle portraiture,” explained Foster, who curated the exhibit.
Rounding out the show, photographer Rosario, a retired pediatrician, brings environmental shots, including two bald eagles flying along the river and a foggy island in the Susquehanna River.
“He’s excellent at capturing nature photography,” Foster said, also complementing Rosario’s use of color saturation.
Ultimately, Foster hopes that viewers will take a sense of community away from the exhibition.
“Harrisburg is beautiful, even with all our problems and differences,” he said. “We can all recognize certain landmarks and feel pride in being here or being from here.”
For Yatsko, a shot of the Subway Cafe exemplifies such pride.
The local pizza joint wasn’t a subject he would have gravitated toward, he explained. But someone had asked if he had a nice photo of the building — which was, to them, a sentimental spot.
“A girl reached out. Her best friend’s grandfather, he had just passed,” Yatsko said, explaining the pair used to go to dinner there together weekly.
He set out to get a shot that would reflect this significance after a rainstorm. The resulting work shows the restaurant’s reflection through the puddles in the street.
“She was so happy,” he said, noting the photo proved surprisingly popular with others, too. “It’s not normally something I would go out and photograph, but people really responded to that.”
The “All Access Harrisburg” flyer features William Hicks’ drone shot of Fulton Bank.
“All Access Harrisburg” is available to view Dec. 5 to Jan. 8. The Art Association will host an opening reception for “All Access Harrisburg” on Friday, Dec. 19 from 5 to 8 p.m. For more information about the Art Association, visit its website.
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