SF Camerawork

We'll see you Wednesday, January 13 at 6pm for an Online Artist Talk with Rania Matar. The artist will speak about her artistic practice which addresses issues of personal and collective identity, through photographing girls and women both in the United States where she lives and in the Middle East where she is from. Through her work, and by making intimate portraits of girls and women, she seeks to focus on our essence, our physicality and on the commonalities that make us h...uman, to emphasize underlying similarities rather than apparent differences. Register for the online event here: https://sfcamerawork.org/2021-online-events-artist-talk-wit Image: Lucy, Newton, Massachusetts, 2020

Last November, we hosted a conversation with FORECAST 2020 artists Brittney Cathey-Adams, Rachel Fein-Smolinski, and Jaclyn Wright. It was a dynamic 90-minute conversation that explored ideas about marking, the gendered body, and self-portraiture in photography. Watch the talk: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-presentations-of Image courtesy of Jaclyn Wright

Happy 2021! We're looking forward to our first event of the new year next Wednesday, January 13 with Lebanese-born American artist and mother, Rania Matar. In this artist talk, Rania will discuss her artistic practice, which explores both sides of her cultural background, cross-cultural experience, and personal narrative to address issues of personal and collective identity. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2021-online-events-artist-talk-wit

If you've enjoyed even just a few of the 38 virtual events featuring 87 inspiring artists & thinkers that we've hosted this year, please consider a tax-deductible donation to SF Camerawork. Today is the last day of our end-of-year campaign, and thanks to a generous donor, all donations will be matched up to $5,000 before midnight tonight. Thank you so much for your donation: https://sfcamerawork.org/donate We wish everyone a safe and enjoyable New Year's Eve! ... Cheers to 2021!!! Image: Jamil Hellu, Avatar, 2020

Today, as part of our Holiday Book & Zine Fair, we are pleased to feature Alejandro Cartagena’s book Carpoolers, which shows people on their way to work in the city of Monterrey, Mexico. . Alejandro Cartagena is a Mexican artist and photographer. His work looks at landscape, portraits and the archive as a way to question social, economic and political structures embedded in cities and its peoples. Cartagena has published Suburbia Mexicana, Carpoolers, Before the War,... A guide to Infrastructure and Corruption, Santa Barbara Return Jobs back to US, Santa Barbara shame on US, and We love Our Employees, among others. He has received several awards including the SNCA grant from the FONCA Mexico, the Book prize from the Photolucida organization (USA) and the Lente Latino (Chile). His works are collected in major public and private collections and he has exhibited worldwide. . Don’t forget to register for our online gathering of the Holiday Book & Zine Fair on Thursday, December 17th from 4 - 7 pm! https://sfcamerawork.org/book-and-zine See more

We hosted 38 online artist talks, panels & critiques in 2020! Which ones did you miss? Check out the videos. https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-past-events Image: Alanna Airitam Photography, Panel #1, White Privilege Triptych, 2020

Save the date for "From Personal to Universal," an Online Artist Talk with Lebanese-born American artist and mother, Rania Matar. Rania has dedicated her artistic practice to exploring both sides of her cultural background, cross-cultural experience, and personal narrative. She addresses issues of personal and collective identity through photographing girls and women both in the United States where she lives and in the Middle East where she is from. Rania Matar Photographer Register for the online event on Jan. 13: https://sfcamerawork.org/2021-online-events-artist-talk-wit

Join us tomorrow to hear artist and curator Nicole Jean Hill speak about the photography archive of a Wyoming frontierswoman, entrepreneur, homemaker and image-maker, Lora Webb Nichols (1883-1962). Nichols created and collected an archive of approximately 24,000 negatives in the mining town of Encampment. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-encampment-wyomi

We invite you to take some time over the holidays to view our two current online exhibitions: Cell Signals and Forecast 2020. https://sfcamerawork.org/exhibitions . Curated by Pete Brook and featuring eight artists and collectives, Cell Signals: Reframing and Resisting Mass Incarceration peers upon the networked image-technologies that shape prisons and the U.S. homeland culture. . In Forecast 2020, our annual juried exhibition, we showcase new and thought-provoking work fr...om inspiring artists and bring our communities together through photography. . Images: Mark Davis, from Constellations & Eddie Herena, from Close to the Wire See more

Be sure to register for tonight's Online Artist Talk with Adama Delphine Fawundu and Orlee Malka: Methodologies of Art Making within Forms of Collapse. Starting at 6pm, the artists will be discussing methodologies of making during times of unrest and upheaval. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-with

Image courtesy of Jaclyn Wright

Tomorrow at 6pm, Rachel Fein-Smolinski, the Juror’s Choice Award recipient of FORECAST 2020, will give a second online artist talk about her projects Sex Lives of Animals without Backbones, and This Woman has ISSUES! Her work includes multimedia imagery that she has made with clinical patient photographs, ephemera, and sci-fi tableaux of artifacts mined from these archives. What does pain look like? How do you communicate something as internal and inexplicable as the feeling of pain? How do spineless creatures have sex? What does invertebrate sexuality have to do with how one communicates and interprets pain? See you tomorrow. Register now for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-with

We're excited to see you on Tuesday for a second artist talk with Rachel Fein-Smolinski, the Juror’s Choice Award recipient of FORECAST 2020. The artist will discuss her projects Sex Lives of Animals without Backbones, and This Woman has ISSUES! She'll also be screening new video work. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-with

FORECAST 2020 is now available to view online! This year's jurorscurator Elena Gross, TBW Books Director Lester Rosso, and artist Michael Jangselected the work of the following 12 artists for this year's exhibition: Trenton Brown, William Camargo, Brittney Cathey-Adams, Carlos Chavarría, Mark Davis, Rachel Fein-Smolinski, Marissa Leitman, Valerie Mendoza, Gyuho Park, Irene Reece, Jaclyn Wright, and Rana Young. Check out all the work in this year’s FORECAST 2020: www.sfcam...erawork.org/forecast Please join us this evening for Online Event: FORECAST 2020 Opening Reception at 6 PM PDT to celebrate this year's selected artists. Image credit: Carlos Chavarría, Dust & Misfires #3

This month we’re highlighting some of the amazing books and zines included in this year’s Holiday Book & Zine Fair on December 17. Check out the full Fair storefront: https://sfcamerawork.org/book-and-zine-fair-storefront In the upcoming days, please join us for a series of online programing leading up to the event. Now is the best time to support artists and find the perfect gifts for the photo lovers in your life. . Today’s post features Stephen Albair’s book SPECTACLES.... . SPECTACLES ...a memoir of Photography and Jewelry . A mixed medium memoir that asks the question, Where does the time go? The answer of course is, we will never know. But Stephen Albair marks its passage through the pages of this book filled with images of his intriguing and intricately layered work. . Here funky and fabulous jewelry-as-sculpture pieces exude a sense of place and nostalgia that is both rigorous and sly as he maps out and exuberantly personal narrative of coming of age as an artist in the 1970s Chicago, 1980s New York, 1990s San Francisco and beyond into a new century. . It is a story of fascinations with design, architecture, and the coded communications embedded in our respective culture of milieus. As the cover implies, Albair knows all there is to know about the prying game. . Liam C. PassmoreCritic and Communications Consultant. See more

Today’s Holiday Book & Zine Fair feature is Pale Blue Dress by artist Brandon Tauszik. The zine includes a selection of photographs from Tauszik’s long term project documenting the world of Civil War reenactments in California. . 6 x 8, 32 pages, - staple bound, soft touch cover. Edition of 150. There are only a handful of copies remaining.... . Brandon Tauszik is a photographer and filmmaker living in Oakland, California. Melding visual art and social science, his bodies of work address key issues of contemporary American life. His work has been recognized by The Washington Post, TIME, VICE, and many more. He pursues personal projects as well as commissions and is the recipient of a 2018 Grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. . Please join us tomorrow for the Holiday Book and Zine fair, where you can meet Brandon Tauszik and many other artists that we featured on IG and on our Holiday Book and Zine Fair storefront. https://hopin.com/even/sf-camerawork-holiday-book-zine-fair See more

See you tomorrow evening for the online opening reception of our upcoming exhibition FORECAST 2020. Please join us at 6pm to celebrate the 12 artists selected by this year's jurors: curator Elena Gross, artist Michael Jang, and TBW Books Director Lester Rosso. Trenton Brown William Camargo Brittney Cathey-Adams... Carlos Chavarria Mark Davis Rachel Fein-Smolinski Marissa Leitman Valerie Mendoza Gyuho Park Irene Reece Jaclyn Wright Rana Young Register for the event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-forecast-2020-op

There's still time to register for an online conversation with Haitian-American artist, educator, and visual anthropologist Régine Romain. The artist's presentation will focus on why centering varied storytelling modalities is critical in disrupting the systemic misrepresentation of Haiti and the Black diaspora at large. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-with

We're looking forward to our October Members' Critique on Wednesday at 6pm. Bay Area-based artist and educator Kari Orvik will lead the group and provide direct feedback on members’ work and photographic practice. Please note that spots to present work at this month's critique are currently full, but please register to participate in the dialogue and discussion: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-october-members-

We're looking forward to Online Event: Artist Talk with Binh Danh on Monday, Oct. 26 at 6pm. Register for the event here: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-binh Binh Danh reconfigures traditional photographic techniques and processes in unconventional ways to delve into the connection between history, identity, and place. As a child who immigrated to the US from war-torn Vietnam in 1979, the memories and trauma of his diasporic experience serve as the foundation for his investigative practice. Image: Binh Danh, San Francisco City Hall, 2014

Please join us TONIGHT at 6pm for Online Event: Christopher Colville. Throughout his career, Christopher Colville has used the base elements of photography to explore the dual nature of creation and destruction. In his artist talk, Chis will discuss the cyclical nature of his work and how he attempts to find balance between meditative simplicity and American volatility while harnessing energy, fluid, motion and light. Register for the event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-chri Image: Christopher Colville, Citizen 9, 2016

We can't wait for this Artist Talk with Christopher Colville on Tuesday at 6pm. Chis will discuss the cyclical nature of his work and how he attempts to find balance between meditative simplicity and American volatility while harnessing energy, fluid, motion and light. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-chri

#GivingTuesday is here! On this national day of philanthropy, we invite you to kick off the end of year giving season with a tax-deductible donation to SF Camerawork. The proceeds raised empower us to continue fulfilling key aspects of our mission: the growth of photographers’ careers, innovation and equity in the field of photography, and the commission of new works. . This past year, SF Camerawork's online workshops, artist talks, and digital exhibitions have created spac...e for meaningful conversations around art and art making. These conversations, centered around artist voices, have connected our photo community through creativity and thoughtful exchange. . Together, we can continue to grow our impact, provide opportunities for artists, and further fund creative work. Each act of generosity counts, and means even more when we give together! Join SF Camerawork today and strengthen the photographic arts in the Bay Area and beyond. https://sfcamerawork.org/membership See more

We're looking forward to this conversation with FORECAST 2020 artists Trenton Brown, William Camargo, and Valerie Mendoza. On Monday, they'll speak about their individual work and address themes of gentrification, displacement and the commercialized image. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-depicting-capita

During this season of gratitude, we'd like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you, our photo community, for your continued engagement and support. You have made SF Camerawork a vibrant space for photography this year. In such unprecedented times, we've come together in new ways to share stories and meaningful conversation around art and art making. . Our online offerings have grown with workshops, artist talks, and digital exhibitions featuring new voices and perspectives. M...ost recently, we've hosted a series of conversations with our FORECAST 2020 exhibiting artists. They shared their inspiring work, and discussed photography's power to shape narratives, define place, and connect us to our past and future. These exhibits and programs are possible only because of the ongoing support and participation we receive from you. Thank you! . We wish you a safe and restorative Thanksgiving holiday. . Image Credit: Alanna Airitam Photography, The Queen from the series The Golden Age (2017) See more

We're looking forward to a conversation tonight with Forecast 2020 artists Brittney Cathey-Adams, Rachel Fein-Smolinski, and Jaclyn Wright. They'll be exploring themes of marking, the gendered body, and self-portraiture in photography. Register for the 6pm online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-presentations-of

If you've missed any of our daily Instagram takeovers by Forecast 2020 artists, head over to our feed now! https://www.instagram.com/sfcamerawork/ .................... Hi everyone, this is Jaclyn Wright taking over for SF Camerawork. I am an artist and educator from the Midwest, currently living in Salt Lake City, UT. I will be sharing work from my series, Marked, which was selected for the Forecast 2020 exhibition. . Marked combines traditional photographic techniques w...ith contemporary digital processes, performance, and sculpture. The title refers to a prominent birthmark on my neck, which has drawn verbal and physical abuse from strangers. Reproductions of the birthmark’s shape and color appear throughout the work. In Marked, I consider ways we are marked from birth, specifically through gender. Birthmarks are like political boundaries on a map, expressing the concomitant desire to include and exclude, to mark belonging through exclusion and differentiation. The work explores the parallels between human attempts to control, shape, and extract from the land and the body. This is visualized through the demarcation of the birthmark as a means to represent what is through what isn’t. . Please join me, Brittney Cathey-Adams and Rachel Fein-Smolinski on Monday, 11/23 from 6-7:30 PM (PT) for a discussion and closer look at our selected work. . Register for Presentations of the Body in Self Portraiture: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-presentations-of See more

Please join us tonight for a conversation with Rachel Fein-Smolinski, the Juror’s Choice Award recipient of FORECAST 2020. Rachel will discuss her projects "Sex Lives of Animals without Backbones" and "This Woman has ISSUES!" She'll also screen new video work. There's still time to register for this online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-with

Check out our Instagram for daily Forecast 2020 artist takeovers. The Forecast 2020 exhibition is now available to view online: https://sfcamerawork.org/forecast . Forecast artist Carlos Chavarría on his work: Dust & Misfires . Thirteen misfires on Thirteen images of the places where they were found. ... . For the past 8 years I’ve been collecting found imagery in different places around the Bay Area that I use both as appropriated materials for my work and as source of inspiration, among other types of photographs, I started collecting photographic errors (Misfires), usually accidentally shot images that contain none or very little visual detail, I think of these images as the quintessential symbol of the popular use of photography and the snapshot aesthetic tradition as they represent/embody that element of serendipity that is so intrinsically connected to Photography as well as the democracy of the medium. . Simultaneously, I was also photographing the places where I find the images (Dust), these are usually salvage yards, flea markets, antique shops etc where vast amounts of photographic materials lay in boxes or photo albums among all kinds of other random objects from different eras that forces you to make your way through to navigate the space, very busy looking spaces that are, visually speaking , the opposite of what’s depicted in the misfires, I believe these places have a particular relevance now after the digital transformation that the medium has gone through in the past 15-20 years moving into a world where screen devices are the main platform to both create and consume images that in most cases won’t ever get printed, and therefore completely changing the relation between photograph and viewer as well as the concept of perpetuity of the image and it’s physical presence. . Instead of trying to decontextualize these found images, the project aims to put these found photographic errors in context by juxtaposing them with images of the places where they were found in the form of photo-collages, bringing together my two main practices as an artist to a physical level, and creating a portrait of this image-hunting process while at the same time embracing the idea of the photographic object. . Technical description . Photo collage . 10 found photographs (various sizes) on 13 11x14 inches Chromogenic prints printed by the artist in a traditional color darkroom . Unique edition See more

Be sure to check out our Instagram for all of our daily takeovers by the artists included in our current exhibition Forecast 2020. Today we're featuring Trenton Brown and his project Sweet Tea. . Consciousness | Our homes are an extension of ourselves; the items we place in our living spaces are reflections of who we are. I teamed up with @karoandkofo to use @ikeausa furniture to tell a story of the human experience, highlighting the individuality we bring to the spaces we in...habit. . I am inspired by God, the creator of all things. All that is created by man is a reflection of ourselves, therefore created by a higher power. . Trenton Brown is 23 years old, and raised in Atlanta Georgia. He was given his first camera in 2015 before attending Georgia Southern University. His work has been featured in the magazines Elegant, Féroce, Shuba, Ondine, Raw, Provacator, and Picton, and exhibited in studios internationally. . Trenton was a winner in the 2018 Atlanta Photography Group "Photo Buckhead", and shared his work Project X at the Buckhead Library. In 2019, he showcased the works Parthenon & Project X at the "56th Annual Juried Competition" at the Masur Museum in Monroe Louisiana, and the piece Wasted in "Environment Documenta," at the Millepiani in Rome Italy. See more

Over the next 12 days, tune into our Instagram and get to know the artists in SF Camerawork’s FORECAST 2020 exhibition through our daily Instagram takeovers. All the work in FORECAST 2020’s online exhibition is available to view now: https://sfcamerawork.org/forecast

SF Camerawork members, please join us for our November Members' Critique with artist & educator Johnnie Chatman. Johnnie will lead the group and provide direct feedback on members’ work and photographic practice. If you are interested in participating in the November members’ critique online, please submit a form here: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-november-members Image: Johnnie Chatman, Self Portrait, Grand Canyon

Register now for an incredible event hosted by the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts on Wednesday, November 11 at 6pm. Angela Davis and Isaac Julien in Conversation will bring together activist and scholar Angela Davis and artist Isaac Julien for a conversation about the influence of Frederick Douglass on contemporary movements for racial justice. Having helped to popularize the notion of a prison industrial complex, Davis urges her audiences to consider the future possibility of a world without carceral systems and to help forge a twenty-first century abolitionist movement. The program is moderated by Sarah Lewis, associate professor of history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 18 at 6pm for an Online Artist Talk with Rachel Fein-Smolinski, the Juror’s Choice Award recipient of FORECAST 2020. Rachel will discuss her projects Sex Lives of Animals without Backbones, and This Woman has ISSUES! and she will screen new video work. Register for the online event: www.sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-with-rac Image: "Correspondence from the White House," 2020, cyanotype on the artist’s US stimulus check letter, archival pigment prints on cotton sateen, archival pigment print on paper (top right: clinical photograph Diagnosis Degenerative Arthritis,1957Source: Rare Books and Manuscripts at University of Rochester Medical Center

FORECAST 2020 is now available to view online! This year's jurorscurator Elena Gross, TBW Books Director Lester Rosso, and artist Michael Jangselected the work of the following 12 artists for this year's exhibition: Trenton Brown, William Camargo, Brittney Cathey-Adams, Carlos Chavarría, Mark Davis, Rachel Fein-Smolinski, Marissa Leitman, Valerie Mendoza, Gyuho Park, Irene Reece, Jaclyn Wright, and Rana Young. Check out all the work in this year’s FORECAST 2020: www.sfcam...erawork.org/forecast Please join us this evening for Online Event: FORECAST 2020 Opening Reception at 6 PM PDT to celebrate this year's selected artists. Image credit: Carlos Chavarría, Dust & Misfires #3

Please join us on Monday, October 26 for an online artist talk with photographer Binh Danh. For the past years, Binh has been traveling across the West, making scenic daguerreotypes in a mobile darkroom he called Louis, after Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype process in 1839. His photographs ask us to reflect on the land literally in the polished mirror surface of the silver plate, provoking questions of politics, landscape, history, and the self. Register for this event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-binh

Please join us TODAY at 4pm for a live student-led dialogue between photography majors at California College of the Arts and Georgia State University on the issue of voting. The exchange will explore voting stories as it pertains to the student’s geographical locations, societal and state-sanctioned suppression, family histories and personal experiences. Register for the online event at 4pm today: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-what-is-your-vot

Madisyn Kaitlyn Epps-Johnson, Evolving Emotion @sailorv

Please join us on Wednesday, October 14 at 6pm PST for Online Event: Artist Talk with Alanna Airitam to hear the artist discuss her practice and how art can be a defiant act of resistance. . As long as I can remember, I have harbored a strong passion for human rights and a deep desire to remedy the wrongs of injustice. Equal to that was my passion for art. It wasn’t until the age of 47 did those intersect for me and suddenly I realized how everything I experienced in my lif...e set me up to be in this moment. To my very core, I am an activist. I believe if we don’t tell our own stories, someone else will. I also believe art is powerful and can move people. I use photography as my medium to share stories, generate action, and most specifically to empower and remind people of who they really are despite how history or the media may omit, skew, or manipulate our stories to form false narratives about our humanity. In this talk, I will dive into how I use my practice as a form of activism and how art can be a defiant act of resistance in a world that is insistent on breaking us down and tarnishing our character and relevance. - Alanna Airitam . Alanna Airitam Photography, The Queen, The Golden Age, 2017

Don't miss Online Event: Artist Talk with David Johnson tomorrow at 6pm! In this special recorded conversation, photographer Lewis Watts speaks with Johnson about his life and work, including photographing the cultural life of San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the 1940s and 1950s. Register for this online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-davi

Please join us on Wednesday, October 14th at 6pm PST to hear artist Alanna Airitam discuss her practice and how art can be a defiant act of resistance. Register for the online event: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-events-artist-talk-ala

Please join us online next Tuesday, October 13 for a special recorded conversation with David Johnson, moderated by Lewis Watts. David Johnson, age 94, will discuss his life and work, including what it was like photographing the cultural life of San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the 1940s and 1950s. Register now: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-artist-talk-davi

Thanks to the generosity of our communities, we’re thrilled to report our 2020 Benefit Auction See How Beautiful I Am was a resounding success. Together, we raised over $66,000 for participating artists! Providing image-makers with the financial support and resources necessary to realize their work is core to our mission at SF Camerawork. We’re grateful to the artists, gallerists, bidders, sponsors, and host committee members who made this incredible achievement possible. Tha...nk you! Though bidding has closed, your support is always welcome, and helps us further the careers of artists in the Bay Area and beyond. You can have an impact with a donation at any level, by becoming a member, and by participating in our events and workshops: https://sfcamerawork.org/membership As ever, thank you for your commitment to San Francisco Camerawork! Image credit: Melanie Willhide, "Beefcake and Betsy," 2011 Archival Pigment Print; 28 x 30 inches; Edition of 5; Signed, verso. Courtesy of the artist and Von Lintel Gallery

Please join us for "Walking Art in the Time of Social Distancing" with Minoosh Zomorodinia. This 5-session workshop is for anyone who enjoys learning a combination of digital art, photography and walking art. We will look at different artists who use walking in their practice as well as discuss the role of photography and video documentation as a form of art. Everyone will complete a weekly walk and document their routes using photography. We will share and talk about our ind...ividual experiences virtually as well as digitalize the experience using different programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Bridge, and Illustrator. Time will be allocated to brainstorm and develop walking projects. We meet via zoom to discuss walking experiences. Classes will be held weekly on Monday evenings, beginning October 19th, 5:45 - 7:30 PM Registration link: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-minoosh-zomorodinia-fall Minoosh Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist who makes visible the emotional and psychological reflections of her mind's eye inspired by nature and her environments. She earned her MFA in new genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, and hold a Masters degree in Graphic Design and BA in Photography from Azad University in Tehran. She has received several awards, and residences including the Kala Media Fellowship Award, Headlands Center for the Arts, and many more. She has exhibited locally and internationally. She is currently a member of Curatorial Council at Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco.

TODAY is the last day to bid in SF Camerawork’s Benefit Auction 2020. Place your bids before 2 PM PDT to support SFC’s mission and programs dedicated to engaging and enriching artists and their creative work: https://sfcamerawork.org/auction Infinite Essence is photographer-engineer Mikael Owunna's transfiguration of Black bodies from sites of death and state violence into vessels of eternal, cosmic life through the use of fluorescent paints and ultraviolet light. Owunna han...d paints all of his models’ bodies and uses a flash that he built which only transmits ultraviolet light. In total darkness, Owunna clicks down on the shutter snap and for a fraction of a second, his models' bodies emerge from Blackness as transcendent forms illuminated as celestial incarnations of our universe. Following the lead of multimedia artist Sun Ra, Owunna casts himself as an Astro-Black Mythologist. As explicated by scholar Marques Redd, the astro communicates how human life in many African traditions is in constant communication with interstellar and planetary contexts, the Black evokes Blackness as a divine, cosmic principle of the universe, and African mythology serves as a mode of knowledge that fuses science, religion, and art to transform human consciousness. Owunna’s work seeks to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that pushes Black people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and frontiers. In opening our eyes to the cosmic forms inherent in Blackness, we revive the primal act of the Dogon creator god, Amma, who opened their eyes to create the universe. Mikael Owunna (b. 1990) is a Nigerian-Swedish American photographer, Fulbright Scholar, and engineer. His work explores the relationship between engineering, optics, the Black body, and queerness. Owunna’s work has exhibited across Asia, Europe, and North America and has been featured in media ranging from the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and VICE to The Guardian. He has lectured about his work at venues including Harvard Law School, World Press Photo (Netherlands), Sveriges Radio (Sweden), and TEDx. His first published monograph Limitless Africans was released in 2019. Mikael Owunna, Infinite Essence: Emem, 2018Aluminum Metal Print; 24 x 36 inchesedition 1/6; signed, verso. Donated by the artist.

Bidding in SF Camerawork’s Benefit Auction 2020: See How Beautiful I Am closes tomorrow, Friday, September 25th @ 2 PM PDT! Support SFC’s mission and programs dedicated to engaging and enriching artists and their creative work. This year's Benefit Auction will also raise crucial funds that directly support artists now with donating artists receiving up to 50% of the proceeds from work sold. . Register to bid: https://sfcamerawork.org/auction . Included in this year’s aucti...on and featured today is a photograph from Danny Lyon’s Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. . All of Lyon's publications work in the style of photographic New Journalism, meaning that the photographer has become immersed in, and is a participant of, the documented subject. He is the founding member of the publishing group Bleak Beauty. . After being accepted as the photographer for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lyon was present at almost all of the major historical events during the Civil Rights Movement. . He has had solo exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Lyon twice received a Guggenheim Fellowship along with a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, and a Lucie Award. . Danny Lyon, SNCC workers stand outside the funeral, Birmingham, Alabama, September 12, 1963: Emma Bell, Dorie Ladner, Dona Richards, Sam Shirah and Doris Derby, 1963/1996 silver gelatin print; 11 x 14 inches signed, verso Courtesy of Etherton Gallery. See more

Join us this evening,Thursday, September 24th at 6 PM PDT for the Closing Reception of SF Camerawork’s Benefit Auction 2020: See How Beautiful I Am, an evening of art, conversation, and celebration. Register for the event: https://bit.ly/AuctionReception . Today we’re pleased to share the work of artist Lewis Watts. . I have been photographing for the past fifty years. Most of my work has explored the Cultural Landscape and the effects of the Great African American Migratio...n which has expanded to the more recent global migration. I have been interested in both the source and the distinction of migration having photographed in Oakland, South Central Los Angeles and Harlem as well as New Orleans, Houston, Atlanta, Savannah, the Georgia Sea Islands and elsewhere. I also am co-author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era with found images and oral histories about an African American neighborhood that thrived during WWII and then was erased by redevelopment. My concentration has expanded to work in Cuba, Jamaica, Black Paris and France and refugee camps in Calais, Berlin and Greece. I have recently been exploring early African American literature, reproducing at large scale, pages and book covers by people like Frederik Douglas, Sojourner Truth and Langston Hughes. I’m also working on a portrait series of creatives of African descent who I think present themselves to the world and the camera in ways that are not influenced by media stereotypes. What I really love about being a photographer is that it puts me in a wide variety of situations, some of which I probably have no business in. . The image of Luma Kanda in his book store in Oakland that was taken in 1995. . Lewis Watts, Luma Kanda in His Bookstore in Oakland, 1995 archival pigment print; 22 x 17 inches Artist Proof; signed, verso Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery. See more

Khalik Allah is a New York-based photographer and filmmaker who practices Camera Ministry with an eye as open as his heart. The resulting work has been described as "street opera" and noted for its beautifully visceral humanity. It is easy to walk through a city not making eye contact, but for Khalik Allah this contact is essential. He sees each individual he photographs. And his photographs in turn allow us to see them, to acknowledge who we might ignore, to look through All...ah’s eye and into theirs, and to recognize them as individuals. This is the power of Allah’s work: to give us a deeper sense of people as people, to share and enlighten, even when the message may not be easy. This work as well and those from his book, Souls Against the Concrete (University of Texas Press, 2017), were made at night on 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem. They provide a glimpse into a world and people that many choose to ignore. His subjects are often drug addicts, homeless, or both as with Frenchie, a Haitian immigrant who Khalik befriended. Using only the available light from shop windows, street lights, or subway platforms, he photographs with a slow color film, a combination that produces images full of grain and texture, a visual shorthand for the roughness and intensity of life on the street, and his own struggles early in life. The light is also often harsh or even surreal, resulting in figures awash in blues and reds. Luc Sante, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote "The result is a panorama of human emotion: sadness, passion, bewilderment, pride, suspicion, amusement, exhaustion all the faces of the night." Allah is currently a nominee of Magnum Photos, to learn more about Khalik Allah and his work, please visit his auction page on our website: https://sfcamerawork.org/auction-2020-khalik-allah Khalik Allah, Frenchie with Hoodie, 2013 Pigment Print; 14 x 21 inches edition 4/9; signed in ink and editioned in pencil on print verso. Donated by the artist, courtesy of Gitterman Gallery.

Join SF Camerawork this Thursday, September 24th at 6 PM PDT for the Closing Reception of SF Camerawork’s Benefit Auction 2020: See How Beautiful I Am, an evening of art, conversation, and celebration. Register to attend now: https://sfcamerawork.org/2020-online-event-auction-closing- Today we’re pleased to share the work of artist Alanna Airitam. I’ve always been passionate about the idea of a world that allows every human being the ability to live their lives according to... their own design. Think about it. The miracle of birth and creating a new human being. To me, that is the highest form of magic. What a tragedy to label a child and corral them into a version of life that is limited and oppressed before they even have the opportunity to dream of what they could contribute to the world. We all lose when this happens. Then history gets revised to make this child at fault for being born in the wrong skin. This will never stop breaking my heart. It feels necessary for me to make photos that speak to who we are, our beauty, our purpose, and our power because so many people of color grow up questioning those things about themselves. I want to make work to be reflective in that allows us to easily see the truth about ourselves. I want people to know how we have contributed to this world in spite of everything against us. It is important to understand history and how much we have contributed to culture, technological innovations, social justice, the economic foundation of this country, and so much more. We are beautiful. We are made of the DNA of people who have witnessed and survived humanity at its worst. That is a pretty big deal and in my eyes, makes us absolutely glorious. To learn more about Alanna and her work, please check out her Auctin page on our website: https://sfcamerawork.org/auction-2020-alanna-airitam Alanna Airitam Photography Dapper Dan, The Golden Age, 2017 Archival pigment print mounted and finished by painting an archival varnish to seal, protect, and add texture for painterly effect; 36 x 24 inches edition 2/10; signed, verso Donated by the artist.