Gina Kessler on SF Camerawork's latest exhibits

by Gina Kessler, SanFran Mag, 04/07/08

I stopped by SF Camerawork last night to check out the opening of three spring shows. The little gallery just south of Market showcases some truly original photography, and has a fantastic education program teaching the medium to at- risk kids (pick up a copy of their book, First Exposures, at the Potrero Hill Whole Foods).

The gallery's most hyped show is Mike Brodie's solo exhibit. As the recipient of the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers, Brodie, also known as “the Polaroid Kidd,” shows off his life with a community of real-life hobos—kids who live off the grid, trainhopping around America. With vivid colors and stark honesty, the show includes straight-on portraits, intimate moments, snapshots that capture fragments of the train-hopping experience, and one awesome shot of a guy flicking off the photographer (or the viewer?) as he hangs off the back of a moving train.

Brodie’s story is cool, but even more moving were the stills in New Yorker Jenny Vogel’s show, “Your Lips Are No Man’s Land But Mine.” Vogel takes stills from webcam broadcasts and low-contrast surveillance camera footage, prompting the question, "who turned on the camera, and why?" The shots are strikingly lonely, and the pixillated blurriness of these low-res images reminds me that so much is unknown about these lives behind the camera. A video of footage accompanies the photographs, but the narration she added at the bottom seemed a bit contrived.

And Melanie Willhide, as part of a group show called “Past Is an Image We Form in the Present,” creates equally haunting and mysterious works. Collaging the front and backsides of old photographs, Willhide creates an effect akin to holding a photo up to light while looking at the notes, drawings, and scrapbook glue on the backside. The image on the front becomes a barely visible shadow shining through.