de la Misión at the Mission Bowling Club

Are you ready to celebrate some of the amazing people who live or work in San Francisco’s Mission District? Nearly 60 people I met on the streets and at the Mission Farmer’s Market allowed me to take their portrait last year and then feature them in an art project. The resulting series, called Of the Mission or de la Misión, depicts these adults in real or imagined settings to showcase how this neighborhood’s distinctive culture, vivid colors, textures and stories, permeates our lives.

Selections of these environmental-style portraits will be exhibited locally in a solo show opening November 14th, 2024 at the Mission Bowling Club, a participant in ArtSpan’s Art-in-Neighborhoods program. I am deeply grateful not only to the kind people who agreed to be photographed (for which each received a digital portrait), but also to ArtSpan, the Mission Bowling Club, and to Foodwise, a nonprofit that hosts the seasonal market and allowed me to run a “portrait pop-up” over the course of several weeks last fall. 

Some information about the exhibition: 

• The opening reception is November 14th, from 6 to 8 p.m. The show runs through April 7th, 2025.

• What’s on view? There are eight selections from my series Of the Mission, plus artworks from a group show called “Landscapes: Real & Imagined Pt. 2.”

• Mission Bowling Club is located 3176 17th St, San Francisco, Ca. Entry is free. Here are the hours. Be advised that one, it’s a great place to bowl, and two, as a disclaimer, I suck at bowling.

• The artwork will be available for purchase after November 11th on site or on the ArtSpan website.

Opening Up to Open Studios

Wrapped up my first Open Studios this past weekend. I met a range of art fans, including buyers, and even folks who weren’t sure how they found us. Thanks to the team at Upside Artspace along with the participating artists (pictured above) plus the S.F. Artspan crew who organize the 50-year-old, city-wide event.

Rather than focus on my latest work, a series of urban portraits called Of the Mission, I exhibited images going back to when I began this adventure in 2015. Although the work represented a mix of styles, it’s all foundational to my work today.

Check out these artists (at least on Instagram):
@jamiesmithart
@chasindoodles
@anideasmith
@sanaz_safanassab
@priyatam.art
@travelerscamera
@waverlyliu
@davidperea_travelart

What's Clicking Now?

If you live in San Francisco the odds are you’re sick of hearing the oft-repeated but fictitious quip about the coldest winter Mark Twain ever spent. As I look out my window in the Mission District, in August, the sky is 95% white, a mix of haze and stratus clouds with a hint of blue. There’s just enough cloud cover to qualify as a good day for a photo walk.

That said, I’ll write this post instead, because it’s way overdue, and I have a bit of news to share. (I’ll update this post as other things happen this year.)

• On November 23rd, “Stand In,” a diptych from my series Night Work, appears in my photo group’s exhibition, called Night Vision, at Oakland’s Transmission Gallery. The images feature the highly engaging Christine Lee, a circus performer, during a burlesque show at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge
  

• On November 21st, Human Presence: Faces, Figures, Crowds, opens at the Belvedere-Tiburon Library in Marin. My portrait, Karla, from Of the Mission, is one of more than 70 images on view. The group show runs until Jan. 8th, 2025.

• On November 14th, my first solo show de la Misión opened at the Mission Bowling Club on 17th Street in San Francisco. It was a wonderful experience and I’m really grateful to everyone who came to the party, including some of the portrait participants, the ArtSpan team, and the MBC crew. The show which includes eight Of the Mission portraits runs until April 7th, 2025. Let’s arrange to meet there.

• In October, “Big Beautiful Wall,” a diptych I shot in April in Eagle Pass, Texas, will be exhibited at Porto Vecchio during Trieste Photo Days, in Trieste, Italy. The image, also selected for a book called The Double City, depicts an unfinished border wall along the Rio Grande in Texas.
  

• In late September, I participated in my first San Francisco Open Studios. It happened on September 28th and 29th at Upside Art in the Mission District. It was be a fun scene with art, food and drink. I had numerous pieces on display, both framed and unframed. There was lots of dynamic work by contemporary artists and I enjoyed making lots of new friends there!
  

• In August, the image Lisa from my series Of the Mission was juried into a group show called “21st Century Portraits” by L.A. Photo Curator. The image from my Mission portrait series received an Honorable Mention by the jurors, Michael Rababy of Hive Gallery in Los Angeles, and James Payne, a photographer. My thanks to the jurors.

• In July, the image Ingrid from my series Of the Mission was juried into a group show called The Photo Review International Photography Competition. The portrait of a Mission resident was selected by the juror Joel Smith, the Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head in Photography at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. It marks the third image of mine selected by the Photo Review - the first ran in 2018. (Joel’s are cool.)

• In April, several images from my Unnatural World series — Valley/Burn and Hills/Graffiti — were selected for an Artspan show called “Landscapes: Real and Imagined.” The exhibition at the Mission Bowling Club (yes, a real bowling alley) included a fun reception on June 25th — ending just after Labor Day.

Nothing is Lost in Translation

Do you remember the scene from Sofia Coppola’s 2003 movie Lost in Translation when Bill Murray’s character Bob is filming a TV commercial for Suntory whiskey in Japan?
“[after a long speech in Japanese by the director]
Ms. Kawasaki: He want you to turn and look in camera. Okay?
Bob (played by Bill Murray): Is that all he said?”

I thought about that moment this week as members of my photography group, the Bay Area Photographers Collective (BAPC), were preparing to host a joint exhibition in March with Samurai Foto of Yokohama, Japan. Would we need to minimize cultural or language barriers? Unworldly me conjured thoughts of food, whiskey and music — not unlike the movie.  

How did our photo groups hook up? No, it wasn’t on social media. Various members of each group met at Photolucida in Portland, Oregon, in 2017, and the idea of joint exhibitions quickly gained steam. Samurai Foto invited us to participate in a Yokohama exhibition called Beautiful Bridge in 2018, shortly before I joined BAPC. We’re thrilled to reciprocate. 

The natural bridge between our photography groups, of course, is thematic and primarily nonverbal. Kudos to our curator, Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, for suggesting a thought-provoking theme called Memento Mori, Memento Vivere (remember you must die, remember you must live) featuring the work of 22 BAPC and 10 Samurai Foto artists. 

Our new show opens March 9th at the lovely Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross, CA. Please join me at the opening reception on Sunday, March 10th, from 1-3:30p. My mother-in-law, in particular, will be thrilled to see our planned Ikebana demonstration. 

The exhibition runs through April 21st. I’m participating in a Meet the Artist event there on Sunday, March 24, 1-4 pm along with my BAPC colleagues Cindy Stokes, Chris Stevens-Yu, Ari Salomon, Ingo Bork, Mitch Nelles and John Martin.

I’ll have two images in the show: Rock/Vehicle and Valley/Building from my recent series Unnatural World, exploring the disharmony between nature/man. I’ve seen much of the work that will be on display and urge you not to miss it. Nothing will be lost in translation.

A Personal Mission

A former diary keeper, I still jot down ideas, particularly for future photographic projects. One idea from early 2019 entailed setting up a table and a tent at San Francisco’s 24th Street BART station to snap portraits of my fellow Mission District residents. A pesky pandemic prolonged matters.

Flash forward to late summer 2023. At my wife’s urging and with support from the gracious Foodwise team, I opened a “portrait pop-up” at the vibrant Mission Farmers Market. Aided by Rosi Lopez, a bilingual assistant, and Rami Levinson, I’ve shot portraits for 57 people (and counting). Each participant signed a model release and received a free digital picture. 

The pop-up offered an excellent opportunity to meet my fellow residents. The volunteers included one fellow waiting for his bar exam results (he learned he passed 20 minutes later), a young man who had just picked up the keys to his new Mission apartment not an hour earlier, and a woman whose family had been here for three generations. Couples appeared and laid their bags of fruits and veggies on our card table. A poet wanted a photo for the back jacket of his new book. There were mothers and daughters and sons of all ages. One woman requested a new LinkedIn profile pic. I met teachers, nurses, tech workers, artists, filmmakers, photographers, florists, retailers, unemployed workers, and much more.

I shot pics of them all, often knowing they wouldn’t appear in this project. I asked most participants how they felt about the Mission, and despite daunting challenges in this city and elsewhere, nearly everyone said they love living here. The lawyer, Ram, said he loves the diversity of the Mission, which “makes me feel comfortable and safe.”

These shots and others will form the foundation of a new series of fine-art environmental portraits celebrating the engaging people, places and (world-famous) street art that signify Mission life. My environmental portraiture tells a story and features a mix of Mission-based textures and backgrounds. Unlike a documentary project that records a specific place and time, in this project, participants may find themselves transported to a real or imagined outdoor setting to demonstrate how we are all “of the Mission.”

I intend to publicly share a selection of these Mission portraits in (or near) the Mission in 2024. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions. Participants can track the project’s progress on this site, in my Instagram feed, or via newsletter. 

Community is the Message

We think of art as a solitary exercise, but with group shows, everyone, including the participants, may feel a sense of community. 

The de Young Open amplifies that feeling to the Nth degree. Walking into the museum’s vast exhibition spaces, you’re immediately gob-smacked by the quality of this enormous exhibition featuring (primarily) painting, mixed media and photography by 800+ San Francisco Bay Area artists. 

The curators opted for a salon-style presentation, placing work in multiple rows that run higher and lower than eye level. I met several local artists — painters, photographers, and mixed media artists — who shared my joy at participating in this large-scale community event.   

I also felt a strong sense of community with another exhibition — one that I helped produce on behalf of my photography group, the Bay Area Photographers Collective (BAPC). Curated by Emmanuelle Namont, Uncanny Beauty opened mid-September and runs through October 21st at San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Photo Center—a hub of the San Francisco photography community and a great gallery venue.  

It’s gratifying to know that the art you conceive of as an individual can also assume an engaging group or community persona. As my favorite hoops coach is fond of saying, there’s strength in numbers. 

What's Clicking in 2023?

Viva Cinco de Mayo! It’s tiempo de fiesta in San Francisco’s Mission District, especially on a Friday. The fireworks commence at dusk. [Note, this post is updated over the course of the year.]

Here we’ll light a virtual sparkler to celebrate the inclusion of various images from my latest series The Unnatural World in exhibitions highlighting the environment. The series, which debuted earlier this year, explores the clash of scenic beauty and the human expressions that impede, deface, degrade, and obscure our environment. 

Who doesn’t feel a sense of frustration about how man undermines the environment? This work is my way of drawing attention to this destructive behavior. Here’s where to see these images in the wild (so to speak):

• In mid-December, my image Valley/Burn will appear in the online gallery of the 2023 International Juried Competition by the Center for Photographic Arts in Carmel, CA. I am a member of the CfPA and send hearty thanks to the juror, Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Center’s Executive Director, Ann Jastrab.

• In mid-November, my image Island/Tunnel, also from the Unnatural World series, will be displayed at Galerie XII in the Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA. The image was named a finalist in FOCUS Photo l.a.’s Summer 2023 exhibition. I was previously a finalist in 2020. Thanks to the jurors, Valérie-Anne Giscard d’Estaing (owner of Galerie XII); Eve Schillo, Associate Curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

• In late September, my image Valley/Burn will appear in The de Young Open 2023 in San Francisco’s de Young Museum. This is a salon-style exhibition featuring work from artists across nine Bay Area counties. Kudos to the museum for promoting local art, and a giant thank you to the curators who selected my image. The exhibition runs from Sept. 30th to Jan. 7th. Pics to follow.

• In mid-September, my photo group, the Bay Area Photographers Collective, held our 23rd annual group exhibition. Uncanny Beauty, curated by Emmanuelle Namont, from Sept. 14th to Oct. 21st at San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Photo Center. Two images from my Unnatural World series, Valley/Burn and Lake/Window, shot in the Sierras last October, will be on display. Hope to see you at the Opening Reception on Sept. 14th, 5- 8 p.m., or on one of our Meet the Artist Saturdays.

• In August, the image Blaze from the series Re-envisioning, will appear in a group show called The Photo Review: Best of Show 2023 at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia. The urban portrait was awarded a fourth-place prize by the juror Deborah Willis, Ph.D., University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. The exhibition will present the work of the 15 prizewinners of the 2023 International Photography Competition organized by the Photo Review. It is my second image to run in the Photo Review - the first ran in 2018. Blaze will appear in a fall edition of the magazine.

• In July, the image Valley/Building shot just outside of Death Valley, will appear in a show called, aptly, Environment at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography in Scotland. Death Valley is otherworldly, of course, and every time I see a sci-fi set in space, I assume it was filmed there. 

• In June, Valley/Burn will appear in a show called Landscape Perspectives at Gallery 1137 in Art Works Downtown in San Rafael, California. The group show was juried by gallerist Kim Eagles-Smith. Please join me at the opening on June 9th, 5-8 p.m.

• In May, Valley/Burn was juried into an online show called In Sight at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley, CA. The exhibition was curated by Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography at the S.F. Museum of Modern Art.

• This year kicked off with my Yosemite Valley image called Valley/Burn, juried by Aline Smithson into The Artist Intervenes in Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis. The main image was shot last fall during an epic hike to a scenic overlook. Little known fact: Cameras provide a great excuse to catch your breath.

• Last fall, an image (now-called) Hills/Graffiti was juried by Elizabeth Cheng Grist into “(Un)Natural Cycles: Air, Water, Land,” at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado. The main image was shot in Iceland last summer.  

Valley/Building, shot outside of Death Valley, from my series The Unnatural World, will appear in an exhibition about the Environment in Glasgow, Scotland in June.

What's in a Name?

Each fine art photo series I produce has its own distinctive vibe. I craft a naming convention for each set of images that differs from those preceding it. 

Just before launching my new series, Unnatural World, I met with a handful of distinguished fine art photography curators and sought their advice about my work. Unprompted, several of them politely suggested that the working image titles could use a rethink. 

Hey, but what about those clever titles? One curator referred to the “poetics” of naming conventions and said I should refresh my approach. He said I needed to stop trying to frame a viewer's interpretation of the image and go with something more neutral and prosaic. 

A shot that I’d called Overlooked, depicting Yosemite Valley and the aftereffects of fire, would now become Valley/Burn. The backslash separating the words signifies the juxtaposition of the environment and how man has impaired it. 

You may well ask, why not name every image Untitled 1, 2 or 3, etc? That’s a little too non-descriptive for me. This series shows what man is doing to the environment both literally and figuratively. Undoubtedly the next series will be completely different. Let me know what you think at rusty at rustyweston.com or on Instagram as @rusty.weston.

Mountain/Window, from Unnatural World, explores the human expressions that obscure our environment in real and imagined ways.

Curating the New World Exhibition

October marks the start of my fine art photography group’s (nearly) annual exhibition. This year we’re installing it at the Minnesota Street Project galleries—a cool space for art and photography in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. That area has become the center of gravity for contemporary art in S.F.

We’re honored that Sandra Phillips, Curator Emerita of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, curated our exhibition. That’s no easy task given that we have 21 photographers representing nearly the entire spectrum of photographic styles. Sandra thoughtfully chose a broad yet timely theme - The New World - how artists are seeing life now that COVID-19 is becoming more manageable. “How has this recent history, our new fear of this disease, affected our lives and our perceptions?” she wrote in our show statement.

How, indeed? For me, it dialed up the anxiety but has also provided time for creative exploration. Sandra selected four of my Re-envisioning images: The Mission, Blaze, With Intent, and Overnight. Altogether there are 54 artworks in the exhibition. She’s giving a talk at our opening reception on Oct. 22nd, and I urge you to attend (it’s 1-4p, and she’s speaking at 2p). I’ll talk about my urban portraits on another Saturday in November and will post more information about that here and on my Instagram and Facebook pages. Here’s a link to our exhibition page. See you there!

Blaze, featuring @ouuthatsjuju, from my Re-envisioning series

What's Clicking in 2022?

Happy World Camera Day. Apparently, that’s a thing.

An image from a series in progress called The Unnatural World was juried into an exciting new show called “(Un)Natural Cycles: Air, Water, Land,” Elizabeth Cheng Grist, the curator of the Center for Fine Art Photography’s exhibition, selected my image, The Road to Utopia, which aligns with the show’s exploration of the environment. The exhibition, which you can view online, will be live until January 15th. My new series will debut in 2023, and I’m previewing some of it on Instagram.

One of my urban portraits, Forethought, from the series Re-envisioning, received an Honorable Mention in NYC4PA’s 10th Anniversary exhibition juried by Elizabeth Avedon. The portrait of a masked woman was shot a year before the pandemic. It appears in an online component of a very engaging exhibition.

Two of my images were selected for the East Bay Photo Collective’s exhibition called “The Night is Young.” I had the pleasure of attending the show opening at the Oakland Photo Workshop, a terrific space in downtown Oakland, Ca. One of the images, called Intake, was shot at a San Francisco dispensary for a series called Night Work. The other, Take Out, is from my Cerrado series shot in the Mission two years ago in the darker days of the pandemic. The show will be live until the end of September.

See the next post for details about the recent solo exhibition of my Re-envisioning images in Rome.

One of the year’s highlights for me was the Bay Area Photo Collective’s New World exhibition, featuring four of my urban portraits (Re-envisioning) plus the wonderful work of my BAPC colleagues. I loved the gallery show at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco.

In November, the Santa Cruz Art League’s People and Places — Photography Reconnected exhibition featured Overnight from my Re-envisioning series of portraits. Thanks to the curator Joe Ramos and kudos to the art league on a terrific show in a wonderfully spacious gallery.

Finally, I received word in mid-December that my Re-envisioning series had received an Honorable Mention from the Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA). The work was cited in the professional category called Fine-Art Collage. Can’t wait to see what 2023 will bring.

Forethought, from my series Re-envisioning, features young adults at night in San Francisco. In the frame: Kisa Hues.

The Mission in Rome

Rome is an amazing place. I’m grateful to the jurors at Roma Fotografia who selected my image “The Mission” for a group show about people at the Bresciani Visual Art Gallery in early June. The jurors awarded the image 1st prize and held a solo exhibition of ten of my urban portraits in mid-August projected at Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere.

The judges said of The Mission: “It is innovative, it recalls the web, the graphic dynamics of youth, red and then that lost but not anxious look of those who surf in the dark but with courage.”

The Mission is from my new series Re-envisioning. The work features portraits of young adults at night in San Francisco. Inspired by the principles of circular design, the composites remix my photographic work in areas such as street, textures, abstracts, and portraits, to express my cumulative and evolving perspective on the urban experience. Evolving is everything, although what I’d really like is a Jerusalem artichoke and a plate of pasta in Trastevere.

“The Mission'“ from my new series Re-envisioning

The Completion Backward Principle

Musicians call it a remix. They reimagine a song, often layering it with different drum tracks or orchestration or harmonies. In digital photography, we can remix images to our hearts' delight because the changes are non-destructive. 

I spent the holidays at home recently and decided to see what would happen if I could combine some of my recent street work, both documentary and abstract. And that quickly evolved into reexamining a little older work with gamers and models. And then I opened the digital floodgates and started pulling in textures I’d shot six or seven years ago in the U.S. and Europe. And then all hell broke loose but in a good way. 

So, what is this all about? Not sure I can explain this better than my beloved S.F. band The Tubes. This quasi-punk band once released an album and a jokey video called the Completion Backward Principle — “the imagination creates reality” — which still rings untrue today. Until now, I didn’t know what I was missing.

As I write this in late January, I’m developing a series of urban portraits, with other projects underway.

A reimagined urban portrait featuring Eilyn Escalante from the series Re-envisioning.

A window seat into volatility

Disruptions have become the new normal during the pandemic. Many shops and restaurants have closed; some permanently. Outdoor dining spaces called parklets have sprouted for those who prefer to dine outside. At night, street light moves through parklet “windows” in volatile ways creating unique abstractions that change shape in a matter of moments.

That’s the effect that inspired my new series called Night Glass. I’m still shooting the series on chilly San Francisco nights. Let me know what you think.

Untitled 63 from the series Night Glass shot through San Francisco restaurant parklet windows

Through a looking glass

What can an abstract image tell us about a changing man-made environment? This image called Untitled 3 is from my latest project, still in development, called Night Glass.

After spending a year documenting my city in turmoil and transition, I’ve embraced abstraction to explore how I’ve changed—and am now seeing things differently.  The photos express what I’d rather not parse into words— a glassy layer removed from what’s actually happening on these streets and behind these windows.

Let me know what you think—I’m previewing a range of them on my Instagram page. Stay safe.

Reaching Closure

I’ve explored every major neighborhood in San Francisco during the course of the pandemic, photographing most of them at night. No, 2020 wasn’t a peak-period for any city, but the evolution of daily life and commerce has been at times both heartbreaking (closures, homeless) and inspiring (adaptations). It’s no secret that the contrast between life for those with or without means have been exacerbated by the pandemic.  

In the Cerrado series, I capture people on the street, and urban landscapes, similar to a documentary-style or street photographer: shooting with available light, cropping for clarity, marking a period of time. But, to be clear, I’m (always) looking for something more than just a straight rendering of, say, a closed restaurant or an abandoned store. Yet, sometimes just a straight image tells a poignant story, and I find it hard to disregard those images altogether.

In a Dark Time ...

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see” - Theodore Roethke, American poet 

I’ve always admired Roethke’s sentiment, and now that we’re living through a dark time, like everyone else, I’m putting that idea to the test. But what does that idea mean exactly? As a former journalist, I tend to take a critical look at my surroundings both in good times and in bad. In reviewing my Cerrado series images, I see what’s resonating with me now, and it’s not watching sea lions on Fisherman's Wharf—it’s what’s happening to my fellow citizens and our city. 

To see clearly in a dark time, one must be willing to accept what they see, which is perhaps the biggest challenge of all. I recently posted a handful of images in a social media group where the idea is to share art we’re producing during the Pandemic. Unsurprisingly, on a spectrum of serious-to-joyful, joyful images are the most warmly received. Reassurance is the priority. 

Unfortunately, reassurance is not what I’m seeing, feeling, or experiencing in the 47 square miles of my city. At least, not now. However, I aim to capture beauty everywhere, even if it highlights decay. This is an evolving story and I intend to evolve with it. Stay safe, friends.

During the Pandemic

In March, as our world changed, I began to see and explore my neighborhood a bit differently. I’m not the stay at home type, but I do believe in staying safe, particularly in this dense urban environment. Taking appropriate precautions, I take long walks with my camera nearly every day looking to capture abrupt changes in San Francisco’s Mission and South of Market neighborhoods.

In photographic terms, the lens is “stopped down.” And as you walk our streets, you see what’s closed down—or “cerrado” in Spanish. While some changes are obvious, and some are hidden from public view, I’m looking for photo stories that will resonate beyond the “shelter in place” that currently defines this era.

Game Faces

Gamers may know when it’s late, but it’s hard to tell by their demeanor. Hours fly by and they’re leaning in with a laser-like focus. For gamers, the experience is much more than virtual.

Gamers I’ve met are usually joyful and aren’t easily distracted. These images from local Esports tournaments focus on gamers — and gamer culture. Most of the players are participating in Smash tournaments — essentially an arcade-style game held in venues ranging from college meeting rooms to sports bars or even Esports arenas built in converted storefronts or office buildings. A gamer (most are in their 20s) may pay $5 to $10 to compete in a tournament that pays the winner anywhere from $50 to $250.

One question that interests me is how does face-to-face social gaming differ from the experience of video gaming in isolation?

Game Faces is an ongoing series shot in Oakland and San Francisco. I want to thank the players and venues who have helped make this exploration possible.