Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2026

Living Color

Charles Cushman
Republican National Convention, Hilton Hotel, San Francisco
1964
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Market & 2nd, San Francisco
1957
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Housing to be Demolished, Gough & Ellis, San Francisco
1959
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Demolition of Wells Fargo Building,
Market & Post, San Francisco

1966
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Up O'Farrell from Buchanan, San Francisco
1960
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Lyon & Pacific, San Francisco
1953
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Rhododendron Week, Union Square, San Francisco
1962
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Telegraph Hill, San Francisco
1957
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Haight Street, San Francisco
1967
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Hydrangea, Sea Cliff, San Francisco
1958
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Aeonium Holochrysum, Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco
1955
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Rhododendron, Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco
1953
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Magnolia, Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco
1960
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Cherry Blossoms, Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco
1953
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Charles Cushman
Clouds, San Francisco
1955
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

And to me it seemeth that Agamemnon got together that fleet, not so much for that he had with him the suitors of Helen bound thereto by oath to Tindareus as for this, that he exceeded the rest in power.  For they that by tradition of their ancestors know the most certainty of the acts of the Peloponnesians say that first Pelops, by the abundance of wealth which he brought with him out of Asia to men in want, obtained such power amongst them, as, though he were a stranger, yet the country was called after his name; and that this power was also increased by his posterity.  For Eurystheus being slain in Attica by the Heracleidae, Atreus, that was his uncle by the mother, and was then abiding with him as an exiled person for fear of his father for the death of Chrysippus, and to whom Eurystheus, when he understood the expedition, had committed Mycenae and the government thereof, for that he was his kinsman; when as Eurystheus came not back (the Mycenians being willing to it for fear of the Heracleidae, and because he was an able man and made much of the common people) obtained the kingdom of Mycenae, and of whatsoever else was under Eurystheus, for himself; and the power of the Pelopides became greater than that of the Perseides.  To which greatness Agamemnon succeeding, and also far excelling the rest in shipping, took that war in hand, as I conceive it, and assembled the said forces, not so much upon favour as by fear.  For it is clear that he himself both conferred most ships to that action and that some also he lent to the Arcadians.  And this is likewise declared by Homer (if any think his testimony sufficient), who, at the delivery of the scepter unto him, calleth him, "of many isles and of all Argos king."  Now, he could not, living in the continent, have been lord of the islands, other than such as were adjacent which cannot be many, unless he had also had a navy.  And by this expedition we are to estimate what were those of the ages before it. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Sunday, February 16, 2025

San Francisco Summary

Anonymous Photographer
City Hall and Hall of Records, San Francisco
(completed 1897 - destroyed 1906)
ca. 1900
hand-colored albumen prints (stereograph)
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC


Colin Campbell Cooper
Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
1916
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Rinaldo Cuneo
The Embarcadero at Night
ca. 1927-28
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Roy Strong
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
1934
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Charles Surendorf
San Francisco Doorstep
ca. 1935-37
wood-engraving
(WPA Project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Giacomo Patri
Life Drawing Class taught by Giacomo Patri at California Labor School, San Francisco
1944
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Andreas Feininger
San Francisco
1947
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Designer
San Francisco via TWA
ca. 1952
offset-print (poster)
National Air and Space Museum,
Washington DC

Dorothea Lange
San Francisco
1956
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Victor Moscoso
Otis Rush at Matrix, San Francisco
1967
lithograph (poster)
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Lisa Law
Downtown San Francisco - March 27, 1967
1967
Kodachrome print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Irving Penn
Hippie Family, San Francisco
1967
platinum-palladium print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Carlos Loarca and Rupert Garcia
in Balmy Alley, San Francisco

1972
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Designer
Shopping Bag from I. Magnin, San Francisco
1982
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Designer
The Democratic National Convention, San Francisco
1984
offset-lithograph (poster)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Mark Hess
Democratic Kick-Off, San Francisco
1984
acrylic on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

George Tscherny (designer)
San Francisco Clothing
1987
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Wayne Thiebaud
San Francisco - West Side Ridge
2001
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Epigram

Go softly past the graveyard where
Hipponax is asleep: take care!
Don't wake that spiteful wasp, who stung
Even his parents with his tongue.
In Hell itself, where now he lies,
His red-hot words can cauterize.

– Leonidas of Tarentum (early 3rd century BC), translated by Fleur Adcock (1975)

Monday, January 8, 2018

Lisette Model - Monochrome Photographs

Lisette Model
Lower East Side, New York
ca. 1939-45
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Lower East Side, New York
ca. 1939-42
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Circus, New York
1945
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Circus, New York
1945
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Circus, New York
1945
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

"I practically memorized Pascal's Pensées.  From an early age I identified with his profound helplessness: I do not know who put me into the world, he wrote, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself.  I am terribly ignorant about everything.  I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects about everything and about itself, and does not know itself better than it knows anything else.  Pascal mirrored doubts that never left me."

"We're floating in a medium of vast extent, Pascal says, drifting uncertainly, blown to and fro.  We think we've found a fixed point to cling to, but it shifts.  Leaves us behind.  We follow it.  It eludes our grasp.  Flees eternally before us.  Nothing stands still.  This is our natural state.  Yet it's the state most contrary to our desire to find firm footing, a lasting base on which to build a tower rising up to infinity.  But our whole foundation cracks.  The earth opens up into the depth of the abyss."

Lisette Model
Belmont Park, New York
1956
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Italy
1953
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
House Facade, Trento
1953
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
San Francisco
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Reno
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Reno
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Reno
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Street at night, Reno
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Venezuela
1954
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

"If you don't properly prepare for death, you have to accept the consequences.  I died 30 March 1983 in the New York Hospital.  I was weak with all kinds of illnesses.  Back, teeth, legs, arms, severe shortness of breath.  Forty years of living in a basement apartment with a chain smoker doesn't improve your lungs, darling.  As soon as the spirit left my body . . . well, it remained a spirit."

"Incinerated, I remained at the crematorium quite a while.  I don't know if the people there knew I was famous, or not.  One day my attorney Joseph Blum saw a newspaper announcement for my memorial service at The New School, and Ben Fernandez's name as head of the photography department.  Blum's associate Richard Blakeman wrote to Ben saying someone'd better come get me.  Ben happens to live in North Bergen where the crematorium is.  That peculiar coincidence, darling, should be given no special meaning whatsoever.  My ashes came to his house."

"I've always been superstitious.  If something comes to you in a certain way, you don't refuse it.  So is Ben.  He got my ashes in the mail and kept them for himself.  They're not in an urn.  They're in the same pressed flake-board box the crematorium sent.  He won't alter a thing.  He's afraid his luck might change."

"You see, from the moment I arrived in that box, everything in Ben's life started happening in a very positive way.  That's what he tells people, darling.  He got contracts he didn't think he'd get.  A job photographing Nixon's lawyer.  All kinds of things that could have gone wrong started to go right."

 quoted passages are from Lisette Model: A Narrative Autobiography by Eugenia Parry, edited and designed by Manfred Heiting (Steidl, 2009)

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Running Legs and Reflections - Lisette Model

Lisette Model
Running Legs, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Running Legs, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Running Legs, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Running Legs, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

"In New York, my ear was delicately tuned to the mixture of street noises.  When I photographed running legs and feet, I heard their music first.  It's not surprising that the patterns of legs, feet and shadows look something like musical scores.  They're dissonant too, incomplete, unresolved.  I don't think I was consciously aware of musical rhythms, counterpoint, harmony, dissonance as I made these pictures.  I knew something was going on.  That's why I went to lectures by psychiatrists and collected their articles on unconscious motivation.  If my pictures of running feet look like no one else's, it's because photographing, I wasn't documenting them.  They were visualizations of what I heard."

Lisette Model
Running Legs, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Running Legs, Fifth Avenue, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Running Legs, Forty-second Street, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Running Legs, Forty-second Street, New York
ca. 1940-41
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Reflections, New York
ca. 1940-45
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

"Try to think of my store-window reflections musically, too, darling.  I loved the ambiguity of space, which became rich orchestrations, multiple overlapping, themes that didn't resolve.  Quavering measures, confused rhythms, innumerable nuances, as in a dream.  Berenice showed me Atget's photographs of store windows.  I never wanted to see what others had done.  Not even the great Atget.  I was afraid of paralysis!  My reflections weren't surrealistic like his.  John Cage liked to criticize certain musical compositions saying, There is too much there there.  There is not enough of nothing in it.  I felt that way about Atget's reflections.  There's just the right amount of nothing in mine." 

Lisette Model
Reflections, Rockefeller Center, New York
ca. 1945
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Window, San Francisco
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Window, San Francisco
1949
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Reflections, New York
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

Lisette Model
Reflections, New York
ca. 1960
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada

 quoted passages are from Lisette Model: A Narrative Autobiography by Eugenia Parry, edited and designed by Manfred Heiting (Steidl, 2009)