bent.in.san.francisco

The iPhone Art

 

I arrived in San Francisco on the the heels of a 6-day hitchhike from Cannon Beach, Oregon. I was exhausted but in good spirits. I was glad to meet up with my photographer friend Joe Azure who put me up in his beautiful Victorian flat located in the Castro District. That night as I laid to rest I thought of the juxtaposition of where I had just been and where I was that night. It was an interesting and entirely new line of thought which followed me to sleep. 

The next day would be my only full day in San Francisco as I planned to press on the next. It was an early morning of coffee and donuts and a trip up to Hawk Hill to watch the sunrise over the Golden Gate Bridge. Bellissimo! We arrived back mid-morning, which gave me time to gear up and head out for the day. I made it several blocks before I found myself in the Castro Starbucks contemplating a game plan for the day. The plan I devised was simple enough, get drunk, head to Chinatown, and shoot along the way. 

Looking back on the few hours I spent walking down Market St. and into Chinatown drinking and shooting I think about quite a few different things. I think about my photographer alter-ego livinlush, who is responsible for all the images below, and where his place should be in my ethos. I think about the style I used that day which was uncaring and undaunted by anyone or anything, willing to point my iPhone directly down a face and press on, never looking back. In fact, later when I finally sat down to review the images I found a photograph of a woman flipping me off. You can see it below. I think about the street photographer vs. the street-artist photographer, that photographer who satiates his artistic appetite by combining street and art elements into a photograph. But what sticks in my mind the most are the all the images of these streets I'm not taking. There's something about the city streets of San Francisco that inspire me like no other. I can't say the same for the Anchorage.

At the tail end of this set which, self-admittedly, isn't that good I shot the image I'd been searching for. The highlighted image at the top of this set represents, to me, a combination of street photography and art photography. The primal drama which exudes from the frame has come to represent my own self-destructive nature, a constant battle within myself, a need to stand still met by my need to fly away while the chaos of such a nature erupts around me. 

But this is who I am. This is what I do. And this is what I love.