SW 3rd Avenue and Taylor Street
Downtown Portland, Oregon
June 20, 2026 | 8:40 am
Cars pass through the intersection without interruption. Pedestrians wait at the crosswalk. Office workers move between buildings. A running store called Foot Traffic once occupied one corner.
At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about the place.
Had I not known better, I might have walked through the intersection without a second thought.
Yet millions of people have seen this corner before.
Not because of the buildings. Not because of the street itself.
Because of a single photograph taken almost six years ago.
It was around 1:45 a.m. on July 18, 2020, during a summer defined by COVID-19 restrictions, protests, and uncertainty, when one of the most recognizable images from Portland’s Black Lives Matter protests was taken here.
A woman later known as “Naked Athena” walked into the intersection and faced a line of federal officers.
I remembered the photograph immediately.
What I had forgotten was the location.
Today, standing at SW 3rd and Taylor, I found myself looking less at the buildings than at the pavement.
Somewhere near the crosswalk, on an otherwise ordinary stretch of asphalt, a photographer captured a moment that would be seen around the world.
The photograph became part of Portland’s visual memory.
The intersection did not.
No plaque marks the spot. No monument explains what happened here. Nothing suggests that journalists, photographers, protesters, and officers once occupied the same space.
The city moved on. Traffic lights still change. Cars still wait at the intersection. People still cross the street.
Yet the image remains.
Reading about the event years later, I was struck by details I had forgotten. Interviews given afterward suggested the moment was largely spontaneous, a decision made in the midst of an already chaotic night.
The woman did not simply appear and sit. Witnesses described her walking into the intersection, performing ballet poses, moving through yoga positions, and remaining largely silent. At one point, officers reportedly fired crowd-control munitions nearby as others attempted to shield her with homemade barriers. The contrast underscored how the calm preserved in the photograph existed within a far more chaotic moment.
Yet the photograph was only one small part of the story. The image preserved a moment of calm, while the events surrounding it were far more complicated. The photograph also captured something different.
Not agreement. Not resolution.
Just a brief moment in which movement seemed to stop.
Standing there now, I was reminded of how often history leaves no visible trace.
SW 3rd and Taylor remains what it has always been: an ordinary Portland intersection.
But for a few minutes on a July night in 2020, it became something more.
The photograph became famous.
The intersection did not.
And perhaps that is what fascinated me most.
Additional Context
The photograph preserved a single moment. Contemporary video footage reveals the movement that surrounded it, including Athena’s approach to the intersection and some of the poses that preceded the image most people remember.
Image referenced: Dave Killen, The Oregonian/OregonLive, July 18, 2020.
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