(soft music) Every city has a Capitol Boulevard.

It's a street where capitalism has just gone amok.

There's no regulations as far as what kind of signs you can have, how many billboards you can have.

For a photographer, that's great because it makes things very interesting and there's a lot to see.

But I think a lot of people in Raleigh see it as a very ugly place.

They see it through the car window.

They don't see it walking around like I do.

(soft music) I'm Ben, I'm a father of two girls and professional graphic designer by day.

So the One Street City Project is kind of my effort to try and find beauty in unexpected places.

Everyone's had that experience of going on a trip somewhere and then coming home and seeing your home with fresh eyes.

That's the feeling that I want people to get from these photos.

But by extension, make people realize that their life is full of those things that could be new if they just kind of stop and look around.

My interest in photography started pretty young.

I was always interested in art.

But I never really took it seriously as like a profession or something that I could do to kind of express myself in any kind of way or express an idea really until this project.

This was the first time really that I kind of took it seriously.

I grew up in Buffalo, New York, which is a very kind of industrial town.

It also has like a beautiful patina to it.

You know, all those beautiful Victorian houses and everything have like this ivy growing up them.

And it's just like, there's a growth and there's like this mix of beautiful manmade structures and sort of nature trying to take them back.

And I think that that helped shape the way I look at the world in a lot of ways.

That's maybe one of the reasons why we settled on this area of Raleigh, Capitol Boulevard, because I think that it feels a little bit like home.

(upbeat music) I think what's interesting is if you look at old photos, we notice things about, details about them that the people that lived then did not notice.

Old pictures of cars or old pictures of houses or telephones or anything.

You look at a movie from 10 years ago and the cell phones look weird.

So that's also the kind of thing I'm trying to capture with Capitol Boulevard is like a moment in time.

I'm not looking for landmarks or things that normally draw people's attention.

Usually I'm looking for like everyday objects, like dumpsters and telephone poles and billboards and things that people anywhere can relate to.

If you ask right now what the project's about, I think it's about like humanity overcoming sort of like commercialism.

And this idea that that's kind of permeating our society that everything's about making a profit, which on the surface level, that's what Capitol Boulevard is.

It's all commercial businesses selling the wares, right?

But I think that there's a human story to tell and there's this story of people and even though I don't have people in my photos, that their fingerprints are there on the photos.

This tree is just like, I love it.

I've shot it a bunch of times and I just think it's so symbolic of like persistence and refusing to quit.

And I think that there's so much going against it.

It's just growing directly out of the pavement.

It's kind of like this like symbol of victory.

It won against all odds.

And I just think that's such a beautiful thing.

And a little bit representative of sort of maybe perhaps the people that work and live on Capitol Boulevard as well, because a lot of these people, they're dealing with things.

And I think that this tree is kind of a beautiful symbol of that.

This project came out of a really dark period for me.

In 2019, I was laid off from a job that I had for a long time.

And it's kind of just like turned my world upside down a little bit.

Then a year later, after I was laid off, I was diagnosed with lymphoma.

It was actually a relapse.

I had had it previously in 2016.

Thought it was gone.

Came back in 2020, even worse.

Tumors through my abdomen and my armpits and my neck and everything.

And it was devastating.

And at that point, a relapse is more serious than an initial diagnosis because you've already tried to treat it.

And so now you're thinking like, this is a persistent cancer.

The genesis of this project came from that.

I was in this dark place.

I was very introspective.

I was thinking about my life.

I was thinking about what kind of legacy I'm gonna leave behind for my kids.

I didn't want them to remember me as a guy who just designs a bunch of logos.

I wanted them to think of me as a guy who tells a story.

And I...

But I had to pick one project just to focus on, and that was this project.

I read somewhere that going for walks after you get chemo was good for you because it would help kind of spread the chemotherapy throughout your lymphatic system.

And so I would deliberately go for like four mile walks after my chemo and I'd bring my camera with me.

And so it was actually, it was almost like a curative as well as mentally as, as well as physically.

So when I'd go for these walks, I'd be tired and I'd be exhausted.

In fact, I have one self portrait I took on Capitol Boulevard where it was the day I got chemo and I looked tired and sweaty.

But I love the picture because it shows resilience too.

These two are two of the first photos I took for this project.

This was before the project was called One Street City.

This was at like six in the morning.

I was going down the street and I was just trying to clear my head after a stressful night's sleep.

I couldn't sleep.

So I went down here and took my camera with me and just decided to just try and take some photos because there was so much going through my head at this moment.

This was, this felt very relaxing to me.

And I think, I think it comes through in the photo.

It's a very, it feels like you can almost hear the birds chirping, you know.

I think it's a very relaxed photo.

And yeah, so this was the start of my therapy.

(laughs) (soft music) I'm currently in remission.

I completed treatment in 2023.

It was six months of chemo and then two years of immunotherapy.

I'm getting my port removed this summer.

I like to think I'm better than ever right now.

You know, I'm healthier than I've ever been.

And I think that mentally I'm in a really great place.

I don't think when I set out to do this project, I really thought it would find an audience, but it did to my surprise.

And I think most artists will tell you like, when you start making a piece of art or work of art, you don't have a complete picture in your mind of what it's gonna be.

I don't think I have a full understanding of why I do it.

So I'm here trying to explain it to you, but I think even myself, I don't have a full understanding.

I'm learning from other people's interpretations of them.

My wife, Sarah, will say things about it.

And I'm like, that's a really great point.

I never thought of that.

Maybe part of this project is a self-portrait in a way.

Maybe the reason I resonate with these subjects is because I've been through some things and I'm still here.

(gentle music) ♪