Eyes on the City 2021

This exhibit features work from two classes at the University of San Francisco: Fotografía y Memoria Histórica and Cityand Photo Praxis. In the past, the collaboration between the Harvey Milk Photo Center (HMPC) and the University of San Francisco has yielded students exhibits displaying deliberate analog photographs printed in the center’s darkroom. This year, given restrictions related to the pandemic, both classes used digital photographs. Specific subjects are far-ranging: the connection between personal and collective memories, portraits, street photographs, hopeful images of street art in disenfranchised areas of Los Angeles, formal experiments about natural and urban design; sensitive photos of the border and haunting photos of nomads in train stations, photos of empty streets at night, boarded stores, and business struggling to stay open, a pensive young woman in a stairwell. Other post-photographic projects play with recycled images to denounce systemic racism; and photos of a neighborhood in San Francisco that capture the uncanny oscillation between refuge and fear in pandemic times. As unrelated as the themes of the two classes might seem, the photographs inevitably capture moments from our current and taxing times, underpinned as these are by a lethal pandemic, social unrest and political turmoil. Photography is inherently connected to memory; therefore, these photographs are an immediate register of our trying present. 

Curators:
Pedro Lange-Churión, Professor, Dept. of Modern and Classical  Languages, University of San Francisco
Dave Christensen, Director, Harvey Milk Photo Center

*Cover Photo by Fiona Conneely

Photographers