Category: Scanned from 35mm Print
Market Produce#4
Keystone Korner, 1970
Keystone Korner, in San Francisco, was a jazz and blues club in the late 60’s till1983. It apparently moved to Baltimore in the 80’s, which seems weird. I was only 18 at the time this photo was taken so would not have been allowed in to listen. There is some disinformation online that the club didn’t open till 1972. I didn’t time travel to the future 2 years when I took this photo, so I’m convinced it opened in the 60’s. On the bill when I took this photo ( on a very cheap camera and scanned in to an iMac) is Boz Scaggs and Benny Cecil and the Snakes (couldn’t find anything online about Benny on multiple search engines).
Maternal Grandfather
This is a photo of my maternal grandfather at age 11, taken in 1913. His name was George and he was Dutch, part of a family that were early immigrants to New York.
Outdoor Plumbing
There is a bit of history regarding this photo. Photo was taken in July of 1970, using film and decades later, scanned into PC.
Location: East Oakland, CA. A friend had recently remodeled her bathroom and the remnants of the old bathroom ended up in her backyard. She lived on Oak Knoll Rd., a few blocks from the Oakland Zoo. Across the street from her lived Sonny Barger, the head of the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. An interesting neighborhood!
Had to crank up the “Way Back Machine” for this one :-).
TBT:A Glimpse Back in Time
Another blogger, SunandGold, recently did a posting from her time spent in San Francisco. Her interest and fascination with the city/culture was shared by me 45+ years ago. I promised I would post these photos from 1970 in one posting ( rather than individual posts that I did in the past) so she could get a slight inclination of what the city was like all those years ago, measured against her recent visit to the city.
If you look closely at the image of Vanessi’s you will see a woman walking alongside the building, having come down Telegraph Hill. The image below, looking up that same street, shows a lone man in a suit walking to work ( this was a morning shot). Anyway, two points:the woman is wearing a scarf. This type of dress or accessory died off or fell out of favor shortly after this time. Also, personally for me or about me, both of these images portray the individual /subject as being a small, insignificant part of the world they are captured in, in terms of composition. To this day I have continued this approach, portraying a sense of ‘aloneness’, in many street shots of people. It almost seems like an unconscious methodology or approach to people. Even in the most crowded of spaces, people find themselves isolated. The images with cars in them also help validate the point in time in which I shot these film images all those years ago.
I think the rest of the images are, for the most part, self explanatory. Of interest might be the image adjacent to the City Lights Bookstore. If you look at the reader board on the building you can actually read the band/musicians on the bill for that week, which in some sense helps to corroborate the time at which the image was shot. Keystone Korner was a great venue for catching current musicians such as Boz Scaggs and Bennhy Cecil and the Snakes! I think it was an over 21 club, but I could be wrong.
Thanks for going along for this short ride into the past with me!
Sunday, 1970
Saints Peter and Paul Church, North Beach, San Francisco, CA. 1970. Hasn’t changed much over the past few decades.
“Meet me Where the Pavement Ends” (B&W version)
A Black and White version of the previous posting. Shot in 1996 on film. Once I scanned it into a PC a few years ago, I have made some minor adjustments, cropping and contrast mostly, converting to B&W. Of the thousands of images I have shot since, this one remains in my top ten. Interestingly enough, I have shown this image in at least three shows, and it has never sold. My next door neighbor, Hanna, my wife and daughter love it though. So, all is not lost :-).
Junk as Art or Entropy or Dark Forces?
I posted these three images on my Instagram account late last night. After high school graduation I slipped away to spend some time with a friend who lived in East Oakland, CA. She had just finished remodeling her bathroom and so had left this pile of debris at the back of her yard. East Oakland was a very sketchy even dangerous place in 1970 ( but that is for another story). She hung bricks from her lemon tree and to me it was either just odd or perhaps even darker than odd: why would someone hang old, red bricks from a seemingly healthy lemon tree? My youthful imagination went into overdrive imagining all sorts of dark rituals or beliefs at work here. In reality, I suppose there was a very practical reason for the hanging bricks, but is sure looked odd.
Anyway, the images were old prints that I scanned into a PC last night. I think they were taken on my Agfa 35mm camera, but, 45 years later, I’m not sure.
Demo
Scanned from a 35mm print in 1970. Location: East Oakland, CA. A friend I was staying with had just remodeled her bathroom and had not yet disposed of some of the debris. I found this in her backyard and of course, was immediately thinking of a photo opportunity. Seems my interest in subject matter has not totally changed over the past 45 years :-).
Garfield School: 1970 and Today
Scanned from a 35mm print taken in 1970; just below Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, is the Garfied School. In the far background you can see the Golden Gate Bridge. The other two images show the Garfield School today, officially named Garfield Elementary School. Adjacent to the school you can see a two-tiered outdoor playground (with students playing) for the students.
North Head Lighthouse
Location: Long Beach, WA. Shot in 35mm film and scanned into PC.
TBT: SF Gas Station, July, 1970
I’m not sure if this gas station is still there, but it was located about a block south of North Beach, in downtown San Francisco in 1970. I always thought it was odd that an Asian-themed design was not in Chinatown, but rather near the Italian section of SF. I guess Chevron, in their corporate wisdom, thought differently. This image was scanned from an old print shot on an Agfa 35mm camera.
Looking back to Film Days
Taken with my Minolta X-700. Location: Rocky Brook Fall, Hood Canal, WA.
Oregon Coast
This closes out Beach Week. A couple of these images, this week, were originally shot on film and then the prints were later scanned into a PC. My sense is that the film images are a little ‘softer’ than digital, but I really don’t know how to describe that difference.
Coit Tower, SF., 1970
Scanned recently from a print made 45 years ago. Couldn’t pick one version over the other, so….a two-fer.
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