Windowpane Series 1
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Windowpane Series 2
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Windowpane San Francisco 2015
San Francisco 2015
The Windowpane Photographs
Cities are, by their nature, in a constant state of change. There are times when the rate of change is very rapid, and the transformation process vividly unfolds. This was one of those times for San Francisco: the urban core of the city became more urban, gentrification of ethnic and working class neighborhoods accelerated. The city's population became younger and wealthier while working class ethnic neighborhoods transformed into hip enclaves of young urbanites.
Construction sites abounded; the shops filled with visual and culinary delights; theaters reverberated with music, dance, drama, and film; the streets were bustling with attractive young people of many colors. San Francisco is a diverse, vibrant, dynamic city: the urban playground of the waterfront, the retail opulence of Union Square, the LGBTQ mecca of the Castro, the ethnic flavors of Chinatown and the Mission, the museum neighborhood of North Beach (the Italians moved to Marin County long ago, and the Beats have faded away), the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Hayes Valley, the Mission, and the Mid-Market skid row, the poverty and desperation of the Tenderloin. San Francisco is a city that holds the contrasts of extreme wealth and pervasive homelessness, high culture and high technology, progressive politics and libertarian capitalism. San Francisco is a city with great natural beauty, and a wealth of human creativity. It is one of the world's great cities and, like all great cities, is characterized by its many, often contradictory, facets, and by persistent change.
My intent, with these photographs, was to express the kaleidoscopic experience of the urban environment, and the many diverse facets of this unique American city, at this point in its history. I use a technique that I call windowpane which provides an ideal medium of expression for this subject, using the reflection/refraction of window glass to create spatially and semiotically rich photographic images, captured spontaneously and serendipitously in the tradition of the flaneur.
This gallery contains a sampling from a large collection of windowpane photographs taken in 2014-2016. Series 2 were taken with a Nikon DLSR camera and are available as 48"x60" or 45"x30" archival prints on canvas. Series 2 were taken with an iPhone 5s and are available as 20"x30" archival prints oh photographic paper.