Just as with the new Magnes, which unveiled its new space on Sunday, BAM/PFA is to be housed in a 1920s-era 1939 building originally designed as a printing plant for UC Berkeley. It is located at 2120 Oxford Street at Center Street, in the heart of downtown.

Is it not fitting that, … Continue reading »]]>

The old printing plant in downtown that will one day be home to the Berkeley Art Museum. All photos: David Stark Wilson

Call it “beautiful decay”: these stunning photographs, taken by David Stark Wilson, show the interiors of the future home of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA).

Just as with the new Magnes, which unveiled its new space on Sunday, BAM/PFA is to be housed in a 1920s-era 1939 building originally designed as a printing plant for UC Berkeley. It is located at 2120 Oxford Street at Center Street, in the heart of downtown.

Is it not fitting that, as the demand for printed thesis, documents, books and monographs has waned, the engine rooms that produced these volumes are now being put to good use while remaining in the cultural realm?

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Read the rest of The “before” pictures: Berkeley Art Museum/PFA (183 words)

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 7 comments |
Post tags: BAM/PFA, Berkeley Art Museum, David Stark Wilson, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, WA Design

The “guy” turned out to be Cal architecture professor Cris Benton, an early adopter of kite aerial photography, whose stunning work can be viewed on his website and Flickr pool.

“Cris is both very talented and … Continue reading »]]>

Sunset at UC Berkeley, taken by a camera lofted by a helium balloon on February 4th, 2011. Copyright: Michael Layefsky

Michael Layefsky’s passion for aerial photography was born one day in 1997 when he was taking one of his customary walks on the UC Berkeley campus and he came across “this guy flying a humongous kite on the big lawn in front of the library”.

The “guy” turned out to be Cal architecture professor Cris Benton, an early adopter of kite aerial photography, whose stunning work can be viewed on his website and Flickr pool.

“Cris is both very talented and an educator. The internet was in its infancy when he started but he set out to document and provide information on KAP, as its known,” says Layefsky, who quickly became an eager student.

Rice terraces, Tirtaganga, Bali, taken by a camera lofted by kite on July 13, 2009. Copyright: Michael Layefsky

An early attempt by Layefsky to capture images from a camera rigged onto a kite took place in Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park. “It was really windy and way too hard to navigate the kite,” he recalls. “My wife nearly had her arm pulled out trying to help me.”(...)

Read the rest of For a stunning bird’s eye view, launch a kite (or a balloon) (395 words)

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 11 comments |
Post tags: Aerial photography, Cris Benton, KAP photography, Michael Layefsky

Over 100 people signed up for the walk, including many photographers whose work we publish regularly on Berkeleyside … Continue reading »]]>

That's What She Said (Lotus Carroll), by Thomas Hawk

Last week, self-described “photography factory” Thomas Hawk teamed up with Google+ to organize a photowalk in Berkeley. A previous photowalk on the Stanford campus had drawn more than 200 participants — the offer of free Google+ swag probably played a part — and Hawk felt it was only fair to come to the East Bay to avoid fueling the infamous Stanford-Cal rivalry.

Over 100 people signed up for the walk, including many photographers whose work we publish regularly on Berkeleyside — such as Michael Moore, Jef Poskanzer, Ira Serkes and Keoki Seu (to whom we owe a hat-tip for this story) – and others, including Sam Breach, Peicong Liu (aka noExcuseG), and Ryan Anderson (dak1b2006).

Ken Duffy -- Berkeley, CA, by Thomas Hawk

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Read the rest of We’re going on a Bear hunt: The Berkeley photowalk (195 words)

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 6 comments |
Post tags: Berkeley photo walk, Google Plus, Thomas Hawk

When, in 1997, the renowned photographer moved into a home in the Berkeley hills and decided to capture his new view of the Golden Gate Bridge, he didn’t just take a few dozen shots and leave it at that.

Rather, over the course of three years, he shot hundreds and hundreds of photographs. The result was Golden Gate [Aperture, 2005], 85 beautiful meditations on the iconic bridge seen through the seasons from a single … Continue reading »]]>

Richard Misrach in his Emeryville studio where he has worked since 1976. Photo: Tracey Taylor

Richard Misrach is nothing if not patient.

When, in 1997, the renowned photographer moved into a home in the Berkeley hills and decided to capture his new view of the Golden Gate Bridge, he didn’t just take a few dozen shots and leave it at that.

Rather, over the course of three years, he shot hundreds and hundreds of photographs. The result was Golden Gate [Aperture, 2005], 85 beautiful meditations on the iconic bridge seen through the seasons from a single vantage point on his front porch.

Similarly, when Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Misrach took his time before making the journey to New Orleans to document it. He waited until October, after the turmoil and drama had abated, to capture images of a post-storm calm that were no less dramatic.

The Oakland-Berkeley hills in the aftermath of the 1991 Firestorm. Photo copyright Richard Misrach

But the most striking evidence of Misrach’s self-discipline must surely be his decision to wait 20 years before revealing the fruits of one of his major photographic projects. It is only now that the photographer is unveiling – in some cases printing for the first time — the photographs he took in the aftermath of the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.

His images will be shown at two exhibitions opening in October — at the Berkeley Art Museum and the Oakland Museum of California – scheduled to coincide with the 20^th anniversary of the devastating fire.

“I didn’t want to release the photographs straight away,” Misrach says, speaking in his studio, a cavernous space in an artists’ cooperative in Emeryville where he has worked since 1976.

“The meaning of photographs changes over time,” he says, explaining that he aims for his work to be the opposite of reportage or journalism. “Photographs can be really exploitative and I don’t want to be part of a media circus. History shifts the meaning.”

Misrach concedes it’s a gamble to wait for so long before unearthing work from storage. Out of the some 40 images in the upcoming exhibitions, and the book that will accompany them, only five have been exhibited before, in 2005.

“It’s interesting: I don’t know what I’ll see. And I’ve forgotten the logistics – was it three days after the fire when I took the photos, or four?

“But it feels right,” he continues. “The photographs are more poignant now.”

One of the images that will be on show at two local exhibitions this Fall. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach

Misrach speaks in the same vein about the images he created of the eerily empty streets of New Orleans two months after the hurricane had careened though.

“I am attached to Louisiana and didn’t want to be part of a spectacle,” he says.

Granted a press pass by The New York Times Magazine, Misrach took a small 4MP Canon Powershot digital camera and shot most of the photographs almost on the hoof, a far cry from his trademark approach of using an 8 x 10 camera to produce painstakingly composed photographs that emerge as large-scale prints.

“I took 2,000 photos on the fly – sometimes from the car. It was the after-story, and it was post-apocalyptic,” he says. A number of images taken with a bigger camera have yet to be released.

The photographs, published in Destroy this Memory [Aperture, 2010], show the messages that officials and homeowners spray-painted onto houses, cars and scraps of board after the storm — whether to record the extent of the devastation or in reaction to it. The scrawls — warnings, pleas, even jokes — show a very human response to ruined lives.

This photograph, of a melted tricycle, will be presented in Misrach's signature large-scale format. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach

“I am here, I have a gun,” reads one; “Help! Help!” another; “Looters shot – survivors shot again,” is written in capital letters on a piece of plywood propped up against a tree; “RIP Thomas Burke, aka Tab,” is marked in blue chalk on a boarded-up garage.

“They are like primitive text messages,” Misrach says. “People’s graffiti showed both anger and humor and together they built a narrative.”

Misrach gifted full sets of the New Orleans prints to five museums and donated royalties from the book to the Make it Right Foundation.

He has also donated two full collections of the Berkeley-Oakland firestorm images to the Oakland and Berkeley museums that are exhibiting them this fall.

Misrach’s Berkeley roots go deep. He cut his teeth working with photographer Roger Minick at the ASUC Studio, a student arts facility at UC Berkeley from where he graduated in 1971.

“The first time I saw photographs as art in the studio I knew that’s want I wanted to do,” he says. “Roger held my hand. He was 22 and I was 19 but he seemed ‘so old’ to me. I looked up to him like a father figure.”

Misrach recalls how he started by working as a lab assistant at the studio – “a glorified janitor” he clarifies — mopping floors and cleaning up chemicals so he could use the facilities for free once the lab was empty at night.

“I would work from 11 p.m. through the morning,” he says. “They were lean times, I was house sitting and living in a van.”

Misrach captured the devastation caused by the Firestorm. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach

Misrach’s first book “Telegraph 3am” [Cornucopia Press], black-and-white shots of street people taken on Telegraph Avenue, was published in 1974.

He went on to produce a highly regarded body of work — shooting in deserts at night, on the parched Bonneville salt flats, and in Mississippi’s Cancer Alley – his lens always focused on man’s relationship with nature, and bringing a socio-political edge to all his images

Misrach is considered one of this century’s most acclaimed photographers and is work is represented in more than 50 major museum collections around the world.

These days, the huge prints propped up around his studio and stacked flat in layers, like so many outsize millefeuilles, bear testament to the fact that he is experimenting. He says he has not used film for the past three years, and is working with digitally scanned negatives. “I’m moving from representational to experimental. I like the kind of work that always stretches me.”

The politics and culture of Berkeley, where he lives with his wife, the writer Myriam Weisang Misrach, have affected him profoundly, he says. Some of his earliest photographs were taken while he was being tear-gassed at anti-war riots on the Cal campus in 1969.

“Being in Berkeley was critical. My interest in aesthetics and politics merged and have been fighting each other ever since,” he laughs.

“If it weren’t for Berkeley I would be doing pretty landscapes.”

“1991: Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath, Photographs by Richard Misrach” is at the Oakland Museum of California, October 15, 2011 through February 12, 2012, and at the Berkeley Art Museum, as well as a companion exhibition, “Richard Misrach: Photographs from the Collection”, from October 12, 2011 through February 5, 2012. An accompanying exhibition at OMCA will allow visitors to share their memories of the Firestorm.  

The complete set of “Telegraph 3 a.m” is on view at Pier 24 in San Francisco. Many of the images from “Destroy This Memory” are currently on view at SF MOMA in its “Face of Our Time” exhibition.

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 7 comments |
Post tags: Berkeley Art Museum, Destroy this Memory, Golden Gate, Oakland Museum of California, Richard Misrach, Roger Minick, Telegraph 3am

His black-and-white photographs of those events, a collection of which are currently on show at the Sonoma Coffee Café on Durant, tell the tale of those dramatic days in striking fashion.

Jekabson had a front-row seat to the turmoil as Assistant Editor of the … Continue reading »]]>

Soldiers pushing the crowd back toward the campus on Shattuck Avenue in May 1969. All photos copyright John Jekabson

John Jekabson may have missed the summer of love, but he was in the thick of the “Seven Days of May” which saw Berkeley occupied by the National Guard under a state of emergency in 1969.

His black-and-white photographs of those events, a collection of which are currently on show at the Sonoma Coffee Café on Durant, tell the tale of those dramatic days in striking fashion.

Jekabson had a front-row seat to the turmoil as Assistant Editor of the Berkeley Barb, the well-known alternative weekly newspaper published by Max Scherr.

The Barb office was at 2042 University Avenue, just a block from the Cal campus which was the focus of much of the conflict. Jekabson was a writer rather than a photographer, and there were in fact dozens of freelance photographers working for the paper at the time. Nevertheless, he would often scoop up one of the paper’s many donated cameras and leave the office at lunchtime to snap pictures of the drama unfolding on his doorstep.(...)

Read the rest of Shooting for posterity: Berkeley’s “Seven Days in May” (1,020 words)

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 10 comments |
Post tags: Berkeley Barb, Berkeley May 1969, John Jekabson, People's Park, Sonoma Coffee Cafe

“It’s so obvious up here,” Seely said, speaking from Anchorage, Alaska. “We don’t have dramatic seasons in the Bay Area, but here you … Continue reading »]]>

Two images from the Markers of Time project, showing "man vs natural time". The first contrasts the moon with a flight into Anchorage, the second pits the aurora against a truck near Denali. Photos: Christina Seely

The visible impact of climate change in Northern California consists of careful records on increasing rainfall or measurements of species slowly shifting habitat as conditions change. But in the extremes of the arctic, change is starkly visible. Berkeley artist Christina Seely‘s current project, Markers of Time, sets out to show that change through her photography.

“It’s so obvious up here,” Seely said, speaking from Anchorage, Alaska. “We don’t have dramatic seasons in the Bay Area, but here you can see the sea ice melting. It’s direct, it’s part of life. I want to shed light on these things.”

Seely is funding her ambitious project through Kickstarter, a site that enables crowdsourcing the financing of discrete projects. She’s about halfway to her goal of $10,000 by Sunday, July 17. Funders who give at least $15 can get a variety of rewards, ranging from a postcard from Barrow, Alaska to be sent on the winter solstice to artworks donated by other artists.(...)

Read the rest of Berkeley artist chronicles climate change in the arctic (219 words)

By lance. | Permalink | No comment |
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His passion? Night photography. His territory: Berkeley west of 6th Street, including the Marina and Cesar Chavez Park. The result? Stunning, moody images which can take up to twelve minutes under a full moon to emerge on his camera after he has released the shutter.

“There is more … Continue reading »]]>

Skyline in Blue. All photos: John Vias

John Vias prowls the streets of our city at night. He has been doing so for years, always waiting until darkness has fallen and the traffic is sparse before venturing out.

His passion? Night photography. His territory: Berkeley west of 6th Street, including the Marina and Cesar Chavez Park. The result? Stunning, moody images which can take up to twelve minutes under a full moon to emerge on his camera after he has released the shutter.

“There is more of a sense of mystery at night,” says Vias, explaining his motivation. “Things look different because of the quality of the light and the angles. There’s a theatricality and drama, compared to seeing the same thing with an even wash of sunlight on it.”

The impetus to explore his neighborhood after dark came to Vias when he was honing his craft on a UC Extension photography course in 2003. Assigned to shoot a roll of film for a darkroom class, he decided to do the assignment after sunset. “I’m a night owl, so one evening I thought, ‘why not go out now’?”

Moonlit Bench

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Read the rest of Photographer captures drama of Berkeley after dark (464 words)

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 21 comments |
Post tags: berkeley marina, Berkeley Open Studios, Cesar Chavez Park, John Vias, Night photography

By Frances Dinkelspiel. | Permalink | 8 comments | Post tags: Javier Panzar, Sproul Plaza

The Least Most, a media collective focusing on “bikes, music, art, adventure and the overall pursuit of good times” posted these wonderful pictures of the Berkeley skate park on Fifth and Harrison streets. Clearly, bikers like the park, too. We thought the photos were worth sharing. They were taken by photographer Kyle Emery-Peck.

By Frances Dinkelspiel. | Permalink | 2 comments | Post tags: Continue reading »]]>

The Least Most, a media collective focusing on “bikes, music, art, adventure and the overall pursuit of good times” posted these wonderful pictures of the Berkeley skate park on Fifth and Harrison streets. Clearly, bikers like the park, too. We thought the photos were worth sharing. They were taken by photographer Kyle Emery-Peck.

By Frances Dinkelspiel. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: Berkeley skate park, Kyle Emery-Peck, The Least Most

The party that the national arts organization RAW is throwing Thursday night at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza defies description. It’s part fashion show, part art show, and part disco bash, with a dash of liquor and plenty of attitude thrown in.

About ten local artists will show off their wares in an event that pulsates with music, lights, dancing and talking.

“I call it an artists’ circus,” said organizer Mandolin Kadera-Redmond, who was hired by the southern California … Continue reading »]]>

The party that the national arts organization RAW is throwing Thursday night at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza defies description. It’s part fashion show, part art show, and part disco bash, with a dash of liquor and plenty of attitude thrown in.

About ten local artists will show off their wares in an event that pulsates with music, lights, dancing and talking.

“I call it an artists’ circus,” said organizer Mandolin Kadera-Redmond, who was hired by the southern California group in the fall of 2010 to put on events in Berkeley and other parts of the East Bay.

Mandolin Kadera-Redmond

Patrons who buy tickets will walk into a room and see fashion models strutting around, their bodies clad by local fashion designers and their faces made up by local make-up artists. They can look at the paintings and art installations on display – including one that puts succulents in stiletto heeled-shoes – converse with the artists and even buy their work. In the background music mixed by DJs will be pulsing.(...)

Read the rest of RAW party in Berkeley showcases local artists (160 words)

By Frances Dinkelspiel. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: David Gerhard, Gracie Ginian., Hotel Shattuck Plaza, Makeda Rashida, Mandolin Kadera-Redmond, Maryam Qudus, Rachel Mahlke, Raw, Tasha Lopez