every day in black and white

Black and white seems to be a theme in my life (and on this blog) thus far this year, so it almost goes without saying that I would make some time to see Migdalia Valdes's current show at Intersection for the Arts, Every Day in Black and White.  For ten years Valdes has been shooting at least one photograph a day in black and white on her Rolleiflex camera.  Her contact sheets line the walls of the gallery in seemingly random order, sharing moments from her personal life as well as glimpses of scenery familiar to any San Francisco denizen.  She is incredibly skilled at photographing at night and also in capturing a certain mood in her pictures, the sort of happy melancholy that borders on instant nostalgia.  I recognize it because I get it all the time in my own roamings about the city.  Valdes's photographs are just the starting point of the exhibition, however, because the gallery also contains reams of her scrapbooks full of the mementoes she has been collecting in another daily exercise running in parallel to her photography.  Taken as a whole, the photographs plus ephemera in the show begin to encapsulate a beautiful, artfully-lived life.