The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center has a few things going on through the end of November and the beginning of December, even outside of its current Philly Photo Day exhibit. If you haven’t visited Philadelphia Photo Arts Center to check out the nearly 900 photos taken in Philadelphia on Oct. 28, you still have a few days to see them (the show runs through November 26). There is everything from scenic skylines and quirky observations to be witnessed as part of the massive Philly Photo Day project, so it’s definitely worth checking out; there’s something everyone can enjoy.

This past Saturday, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center hosted a book signing and launch party for the first monograph by photographer Chad States. His book “Cruising” depicts the underground practice in gay communities of men seeking out other men with common desires in public places, such as parks, public restrooms or wooded groves. States captures the scenes of these places and people hidden in plain sight at locations throughout the country. Their faces obscured, much like the locations where they meet, the series brings an honest human element to a process often bound by secrecy and taboo. Philadelphia Photo Arts Center will be selling copies of States’s “Cruising,” published by powerHouse Books.

On Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m., Philadelphia Photo Arts Center will host a screening of “Somewhere to Disappear,” a film by Laure Flammarion and Arnaud Uyttenhove starring American photographer Alec Soth. The film explores the desire to run away or to get off the grid by following Soth through his project “Broken Manual,” where he investigates the locations people retreat to in order to escape civilization. He documents monks, survivalists, runaways and others that choose a lifestyle of isolation or at least off-the-beaten-path. The tendency to “get away from it all” is a time-tested, universal yearning, but one which rings especially true in a country where frontiers and manifest destiny have played a powerful role in sculpting Americans’ sense of rugged individualism.

Regardless of whether you want to see the many individual perspectives of a city, or explore hidden and countercultural practices at work in contemporary society, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center delivers. With a wide range of programming, it presents the ubiquitous and the obfuscated through the medium of captured images and photographic media. And, of course, stay tuned for events throughout December and into the beginning of 2012.

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is located at 1400 N. American St., room #103; 215-232-5678.