JOURNEYS WITH JOHN CENA

As an escape from a tumultuous year, Inquirer photojournalist Chip Fox set out to photograph a toy in elaborate micro-scenes.

A John Cena action figure dances with a partner in September. Inquirer photographer Charles Fox staged a series of scenes with the Cena action figure in various locations throughout the year as an escape from reality.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Months of covering stories related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests related to the death of George Floyd had taken their toll. As an Inquirer photographer, I recognized the importance of the issues involved and their historical significance, but it also prompted a need to briefly escape reality and recharge.

That need brought me back in touch with an old friend. It just so happened that this friend was a 6-inch-tall strongman. So began a summer and fall of imaginary trips with a John Cena action figure.

The origin of this journey started several years ago on a trip to Maine. After raising three sons and taking plenty of family trips together over the years, I thought my role as the family photographer was well-defined. But on one of the first trips my wife and I took without our sons to Maine, I decided to try something new while I waited for her to finish a yoga class. So I started photographing an action figure in an attempt to humorously busy myself.

Before leaving for the vacation, I picked up what appeared to be a generic wrestling figure after being unable to locate a Spider-Man. I didn’t remember any of my sons playing with this toy, but with its posable joints, I knew it would serve its purpose as a photography subject. My wife later informed me it was John Cena, the pro wrestler and TV star.

Inquirer Staff Photographer Charles Fox at work on a New Year’s Eve-theme photo featuring an action figure of John Cena. Photo by Bryn Fox.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Following the trip to Maine, I carried on the tradition, exchanging photos with my sons, who opted to use Star Wars stormtroopers and droids as their subjects. Then the novelty wore off. There were many trips for both work and pleasure — Final Fours, Alaska, NBA playoffs, Glacier National Park — where John never made it out of my suitcase.

The story may have ended there if not for the events of the spring and summer of 2020. John and I once again found ourselves reunited.

But a transition had taken place over the years, and the photographs now became about my lifelong love of toys and my childhood attempts to turn fantasy into reality. As a boy, I would search the woods that surrounded our home for materials to build dinosaur lands in cardboard boxes or on tabletops. I would create landscapes for Western characters to ride horseback through, jungles for the characters of Disney’s adaptation of Jungle Book, and outer-space worlds for Mattel’s Major Matt Mason.

It’s not a unique endeavor; every child must have a favorite toy or stuffed animal that he or she dreams of coming to life and the adventures they would go on. It’s why the movie* Toy Story *always resonated so much with me. I just wanted to be included in the toys’ secret world and their adventures.

Ray Boyd

While my original photos of John were more impromptu, I knew as a photographer that I needed to raise the level of my photographs to create the movement and details that would bring them to life.

I had thought about switching figures, maybe using a historical person I admired or something with deeper emotional attachment to my sons’ childhoods. But, in the end, John seemed to be the perfect fit. The multi-jointed strongman was not only flexible enough to create different positions, he was flexible in character as well, easily able to go from muscle-bound pugilist to adventure-seeking he-man to fun-loving good-time guy.

Just as many did this year, my family had to change travel plans, like a trip to the national parks of the American Southwest, due to the pandemic. Regular routines and outlets, like playing basketball, became a health risk. Those events and activities have been postponed to a future time.

What began on a whim has turned into a creative outlet for me and now a connection between a father and son. My youngest son, Bryn, 24, has joined the journey, opting for Star Wars and Marvel characters to photograph and, in return, broadening my own subjects.

His employment has been impacted by the pandemic, and he, too, is finding himself unable to travel, experience, or photograph the larger world. Bryn has, like me, gravitated to a smaller, imaginary world — to a childhood not so long ago, in a galaxy far, far inside.

July 4, 2020: We moved our one son, Mackenzie, to New Hampshire to work temporarily for a friend from college. He had planned on doing tours in the Grand Canyon this summer, but the pandemic changed that. While in New England, we decided to take a side trip to Maine for a few days. (Everyone in the family tested negative for the virus before leaving New Hampshire.) Maine is where I first shot photos of John. The idea came back while sitting along the coast. Creativity always seemed to flow in the ocean breeze during the years I worked in Maine. Even during a pandemic, Maine still inspired me.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
July 2020: I grew up along a stream, a child of the water’s edge. In difficult and important times, I have always sought the counsel of water and found myself beside flowing water. The womb-like sound of a lapping stream has always been comforting to me. It harkens back to our birth, but it’s our mortality we feel during these times. Like many photographers I work with, the pandemic caused me to update a will and write funeral wishes and thoughts to my family. I took John and a toy wooden canoe to the stream behind our house. If I am going to do these photos of John, I need to upgrade my approach — improved attention to detail, the illusion of movement, advance planning. I took the advice of my sons and began to look at the work of toy photographers. I am humbled and inspired by their work. John and I begin our new chapter of journeys.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Sept. 16, 2020: Except for when I had knee and shoulder surgery, this is the longest I have gone without playing basketball in decades. I tried photographing some shots of John playing basketball as a replacement, but it lacks everything I love about the sport: the grace, the movement, the trickery, the spacing, and the camaraderie. My friend Mike and I reached out to each other. We were both born the same week of September in 1959. We achieved a goal of playing basketball into our 60s. Now we ask the same question, “Is this how our basketball playing ends?” I thought of the words that coaching great John Chaney once said to me: “I didn’t grow old because I played a game. I grew old because I stopped playing.” One of our basketball friends, Todd, a college professor at Howard University and a gentle giant of a man, had recently passed away from a heart attack during cancer treatments. I can’t even begin to calculate how many hundreds of games we played together.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Aug. 2, 2020: Four months after his passing, a memorial service was held for my father-in-law, Sam. He died after battling non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for over 20 years. We shared the same birthday and the same odd sense of humor. He kept his inner child alive till the pain took it away. It is what made him a wonderful grandfather. There was never any hesitation on his part to roll back the years and play with one of his nine grandchildren. I think he would have appreciated the photos of John and the humor. So many of us have experienced loss, COVID-related or not, during this pandemic. Luckily, Sam was able to return home to hospice care and didn’t have to die alone in a hospital, where visitors weren’t allowed.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Aug. 29, 2020: I had spent the past few hours waiting for a protest march in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. Thunderstorms cancelled the march. The weather cleared so I photographed John by a ferris wheel at Penn's Landing all the while fearing there could be a night of unrest in the city. I had a brief moment of escape to a fantasy world. It feels like we have been working on the edge of our seat, on a keg of explosives, for months now. My car always has a bag packed with a helmet, a gas mask, and ballistic goggles now.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
September 2020: I thought my wife, Theresa, and I would be in the southwestern United States visiting sights like Zion National Park and Arches to celebrate her birthday and our anniversary. Like many, we had to change our travel plans because of COVID-19.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
September 2020: Thirty years of marriage deserved a better celebration — a slow dance under a blanket of stars, a scenic backdrop, Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” the song we danced to on our wedding day drifting in on the wind, bringing back memories — a special moment in a special place. For us the trip to the southwest will have to take place another time. I must confess I am not the dancer John is. A musical snob, I took a stand against disco as a teenager in the 1970s, thwarting the development of my dance skills and making me a bore at most weddings.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Sept. 7, 2020: After attending a niece’s wedding (delayed four months due to the pandemic), we decided to do a trip to Chincoteague, Va., for a few days to celebrate my wife’s birthday. It’s not the national parks of Utah and Arizona, but it will have to do this year. It’s been 28 years since we were here last. We are shocked by the crowded beach and the lack of masks and social distancing — the scary scenes we have seen on the news from beaches and college parties. We opt to picnic off of a marsh trail and come back at sunset. John and I get up at sunrise to do some beach shots. I left as other beachgoers began to arrive.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Sept. 20, 2020: My father wrote books on fly fishing. In tribute to him, I took John fishing near the date of Dad’s birthday. He would have been 10 during the yellow fever pandemic in 1918. I never thought to ask, and he never talked about it. I never thought I would experience such a thing in my lifetime. These shots are never as easy as I expect. It’s hard getting down to the level of a 6-inch action figure, laying on my belly in a cold stream, splashing water with one hand to create movement while I hold a camera with the other. I am not a fisherman, but I tried to do the photo correctly out of respect for my father down to the jassid in the trout’s mouth.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Oct. 19, 2020: I photographed John in a Halloween scene. My sons are grown but it is hard to imagine a Halloween without trick-or-treating. I always went and told ghost stories to their elementary school classes and dressed in ghoulish costumes. Now life is scary enough. Ghost stories would seem in poor taste considering the toll of the pandemic and gun violence.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Nov. 29, 2020: The shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., the ensuing unrest in Philadelphia, and the Presidential election had delegated John to the back burner for weeks. There was no time to consider photographing a toy. It would have been laughable to consider. It was simply a case of laboring through one day and being ready for what the next day brought on. It’s just after midnight on a clear night. The temperature has dropped below freezing. Some may think I’m odd for photographing an action figure, but most would question my sanity for taking photos of it outside when it is so cold. I’m photographing a tabletop winter scene, using flour for snow. The stream in our backyard gurgles and laughs in the background as two owls hoot back and forth in stereo. It’s funny how normal and beautiful life can be at times in the midst of all of this.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Dec. 9, 2020: I received a news tip that a group of advocates for the homeless were planning an action to prevent evictions from a Philadelphia COVID-19 prevention hotel. That evening, I tried to refine a photograph of John, but I found myself distracted and making mistakes. Sirens from nearby Chester could be heard from my backyard. Months of covering the events of the year, including the rise in gun violence, had made it hard to concentrate. On this evening John could not provide a distraction. I think I have forgotten how to relax this year. John and I tried to wrap up 2020 early, and do a New Year’s photo in advance. It would be nice to think at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, a vaccine will be proven successful, the pandemic will disappear, racial justice will be achieved, and political divisions will heal, but that unfortunately would be a fantasy far greater than those achieved photographing an action figure. Drink up, John. Who knows what journeys 2021 holds?CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer