I recently made another appointment at Pier 24, aka our own local climate-controlled photography wonderland, this time to see their current group show that focuses on Bay Area photographers and images of the Bay Area. Many of the gallery's 20+ rooms are given over to a single photographer, and it is really wonderful to get to spend time with (for instance) a whole suite of Henry Wessel's humor-inflected studies of suburbia or Richard Misrach's intimate pictures of Telegraph Avenue street life. Larry Sultan (pictured here) brings classical formalism and a subtle sense of mystery to his large-scale images, shot just where nature meets man-made development, while Jim Goldberg makes visible the secret lives of runaways trying to survive in the city. The natural landscape is well-represented too, from early images of mountains and waterfalls by Carleton Watkins to Eadweard Muybridge's famous panorama of the San Francisco Bay (cleverly paired with a more recent series of photos by Mark Klett of the exact same vista). I was sad to find the gallery's projectors down for maintenance during my visit, so I was unable to see either work by Kota Ezawa or the scenes from Bullitt that are normally part of the show. But those should be up by the time you go, and if you get stumped by the lack of wall labels feel free to tap one of the helpful docents who will happily explain what you're looking at.
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