CALIBER

Between 1985 and 1995 I lost pretty much all that was dear to me—friends, family, home and possessions—and for six years I plumbed the depths of experience and my own psyche, living on the mean streets of the City as a homeless junkie. It damn near killed me. While hospitalized I had an epiphany and re-embraced Life. It was an absolute line of demarcation between the Now and the Past, so at the age of 51 my life was essentially a tabula rasa. Over the next six years, from 2001 through 2006, I literally reinvented myself while living in a Sixth Street hotel named the Shree Ganeshai. It was during this time, near the end of 2002, that I rescued a cheap little one megapixel camera from the trash and started photographing my surroundings. Although I had a great time doing this, the resulting very low resolution photos were completely unusable, but they did inspire me to go into debt a year later with the purchase of a little Canon G3. Around the same time I got a used computer with an early version of Adobe Photoshop already installed (I think it was PS4 or PS5). That was when The Hotel Project, renamed Up from the Deep, really began. Besides wanting to make a photographic record, I wanted to change the way people saw central city architecture and thus save it from the obliteration that was then a very real possibility. Also, I had become deeply involved in efforts to improve the quality of life in SROs (single room occupancy residential hotels), so I used my photos to show the plight of their tenants. No doubt partly because I was the only person who cared enough about these buildings to photograph them, at the end of 2006 I was asked to work with architectural historian Michael Corbett (Splendid Survivors: San Francisco’s Downtown Architectural Heritage, 1979, California Living Books) on a survey of the Tenderloin for the National Register of Historic Places district nomination, which was accepted in 2007 and approved in 2008. The Tenderloin, now officially the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District, continues to be a focal point for my work as I complete the third and final volume of Up from the Deep and develop a map of the historic district.

Up from the Deep traces my evolution as a photographer, writer and historian. Part One, Sixth Street, is the most personal of three volumes, centered on my experience while living in the Shree Ganeshai Hotel. Part Two, Mid-Market, is both an epitaph and an appreciation that encompasses the histories of the district’s theaters and other significant architecture, the reasons for the district’s decay, and my personal observations about the buildings that are still standing. With Part Three, Uptown Tenderloin, I completely immersed myself in the role of historian, so this volume is chock-full of archival material, as well as my own photos. As a matter of fact, I’ve accumulated such a mountain of material that simply forging a coherent narrative has taken a great deal of time. I’m aiming at sometime this spring to finish it. Regarding San Francisco Architectural Heritage (http://www.sfheritage.org/), in January 2009 I left the first two volumes of Up from the Deep with Jack Gold, director of Heritage, who knew of my work with Michael Corbett. As a result, he asked me to open Heritage’s 2009 lecture series, which I was very pleased and honored to do with a talk and slideshow entitled “Exploring the Architecture of San Francisco’s Central City.” I had a blast doing it, the audience loved it, and Jack liked it so much he asked me if I would do another lecture for 2010. Damn straight I will! I mean, absolutely! And thank you!

When I photographed Bill (see “Still Bill” in the Post-script to Up from the Deep, http://upfromthedeep.com/encounters-stories/), the mere fact that I wanted to capture his image for the entire world to see touched something deep inside him. The time we spent together was so emotionally charged, I couldn’t stop my eyes from leaking. Just before I started shooting, we were visited by an angel. Really. She’s in the photograph with her arm around Bill.

There are so many images from this project that are personal favorites; I thought at first that it would be difficult to choose just one. Actually, the choice was almost immediately obvious once I began sifting through my photos. “Fallen from Grace” is the most recent (20 Nov 08) of many photos I’ve taken since 2003 of the Hibernia Bank Building at 1 Jones Street, and there is a laundry list of reasons why I’m so fond of it. Much of my psychological relationship with central city architecture is encapsulated by the Hibernia. Completed sixteen years before the ’06 earthquake and fire, this single building placed architect Albert Pissis at the top of his profession and marked an epoch in San Francisco architecture; in fact, for many years San Franciscans called the Hibernia Bank Building “the Paragon.” Its glorious past now all-but-forgotten, for several decades the building has suffered from neglect and abuse, hence the photo’s title. I like this image for the subtle play of light created by clouds and fog, for the muted highlights of the buildings that frame the Hibernia, and for the four-point perspective that inexorably draws the eye inward to the photo’s center. I also really like the colors, saturated yet subtle. The juxtaposition of the check cashing sign is a sad and ironic commentary not only about the fate of the Hibernia, but also about the current state of our society.

Current camera gear? For the past year-and-a-half I’ve been using a Canon G9. I shoot in RAW format using manual settings. My “darkroom” is Adobe CS4. I print with UltraChrome K3 pigment inks on Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper, using an Epson R2400 eight-color printer.

See the end of Question #1.

The place I would most like to explore and photograph is the city of Prague in the Czech Republic.

Among the photographers whose works I’ve found most inspiring are Charles Marville, Paul Strand, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, Andres Kertesz, Lisette Model, Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, Ben Shahn, Berenice Abbott, and Arnold Genthe. And of course Arthur Fellig (Weegee).

If I could spend a day with any photographer living or dead, I’d have a hard time choosing only one. I guess I would probably pick Arnold Genthe, on a day when he was documenting San Francisco’s Chinatown, before the ’06 earthquake and fire. The images from that series resonate very deeply with me.

Anyone who photographs San Francisco should know about Arnold Genthe. Anyone interested in architecture should know the work of Charles Marville. Anyone who photographs people should know about Lisette Model and Helen Levitt.

Very few people in my life know that I used to write music for motion pictures and performance art and until 1985 shared a 16-track recording studio at 21^st and Shotwell named “Truth and Beauty.” I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss having a piano, but such is life.