March 19 - August 8, 2015
Special Collections Gallery, 4th Floor
J. Paul Leonard Library
San Francisco State University
1630 Holloway Ave
Dual Views: Labor Landmarks of San Francisco explores the hidden historic labor landscape of San Francisco: Depression-era waterfront battles between striking longshoremen and police, iconic labor temples amongst soaring office towers, a former dynamite factory in idyllic Glen Canyon, and more. San Francisco State University alumni Wendy Crittenden and Tom Griscom drew upon the Labor Archives and Research Center’s San Francisco Labor Landmarks Guide Book to identify sites and then roamed the city’s streets seeking traces of its restive past.
The dramatic images in Dual Views underscore the city’s ever-changing landscape. Wendy Crittenden searched “for relics of past, observing the transition of place. We struggle to keep place, but place is always in flux.” San Francisco was once a gritty working port before it became the current tourist destination and home to trendy shops and upscale restaurants. As Tom Griscom notes “in the end, what we choose to preserve, what we choose to repurpose, and what we choose to forget is a testament to what we value as a society.”
Crittenden and Griscom’s contrasting styles form a fresh vision of the city and add a new perspective on the tradition of landscape photography. “The images bring the viewer to each place as a stranger, each can assume and deduce his/her own imagined memory of it,” says Crittenden while Griscom argues “This is not a documentary based on certain historical events or specific moments in time; rather, my goal is to show how these places comment on the evolution of a city itself."
Organized by The Labor Archives and Research Center
Reception
April 2, 2015 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm.
The opening reception will feature remarks by the photographers about their work and a talk by noted San Francisco labor historian Robert Cherny.
Spotlight Exhibit Tuesday, March 10, 2015