Photolalia
December 04, 2008
Mission and Third
(San Francisco, 2007. Image copyright Hamish Reid).
Early one Sunday morning years ago I set up my 4x5 view camera on Mission Street around Third in San Francisco to capture a beautiful exposed wall on a classic old semi-derelict building I used to see every week on my way down Mission. The original image still hangs in my studio as a black and white print from my darkroom days, and it's one of my favourite rushed get in / get out street view camera shots from those days (how do you do rushed street shots with a view camera? Slowly…):
It's obviously all about the textures, shapes, and lightplay on that wall, and the way it stands out sort of naked and unassuming, but it was also about documenting a rapidly-changing street view as SFMOMA opened around the corner and the whole SOMA thing gained momentum (click here for a Google street view of the same scene a dozen or so years later — the building itself has been renovated almost beyond recognition, the wall's hidden again, and the vacant blocks aren't quite as vacant any more…).
Apart from printing it, I didn't really do much with the image for a long while afterwards — it got scanned in sometime down the line and just sort of sat there. And then I started the sessions with Lily and got interested (obsessed, perhaps) with combining building facades and surfaces with those other, softer, better-known surfaces, and with a little editing and a composited Move from my Flames series, I sort of couldn't see Mission and Third in the same way again. It's one of a pair of images that uses this building; the other one might surface here one day (or not).
(San Francisco, 2007. Image copyright Hamish Reid).
Early one Sunday morning years ago I set up my 4x5 view camera on Mission Street around Third in San Francisco to capture a beautiful exposed wall on a classic old semi-derelict building I used to see every week on my way down Mission. The original image still hangs in my studio as a black and white print from my darkroom days, and it's one of my favourite rushed get in / get out street view camera shots from those days (how do you do rushed street shots with a view camera? Slowly…):
It's obviously all about the textures, shapes, and lightplay on that wall, and the way it stands out sort of naked and unassuming, but it was also about documenting a rapidly-changing street view as SFMOMA opened around the corner and the whole SOMA thing gained momentum (click here for a Google street view of the same scene a dozen or so years later — the building itself has been renovated almost beyond recognition, the wall's hidden again, and the vacant blocks aren't quite as vacant any more…).
Apart from printing it, I didn't really do much with the image for a long while afterwards — it got scanned in sometime down the line and just sort of sat there. And then I started the sessions with Lily and got interested (obsessed, perhaps) with combining building facades and surfaces with those other, softer, better-known surfaces, and with a little editing and a composited Move from my Flames series, I sort of couldn't see Mission and Third in the same way again. It's one of a pair of images that uses this building; the other one might surface here one day (or not).
