January 5 - February 24, 2007

Jem Cohen
Jenni Olson
Natalie Zimmerman

Traces of life on the thin film of longing considers the photograph in relation to film and video, challenging audiences to respond to the “white cube” gallery space in a new way. Each film or video piece, though differing in subject matter and narrative technique, is composed entirely of lengthy still shots, rendering an approach reminiscent of the photo essay. Jem Cohen’s Chain is a political film about global acquiescence to a corporate cultural environment comprising malls, hotels, airports, office parks, theme parks, chain stores, and chain restaurants. Bay Area-based Jenni Olson’s film The Joy of Life, composed entirely of still shots of San Francisco, consists of a two-part narrative voice-over by a young lesbian recounting the trials and tribulations of her love life and trying to come to terms with the grim history of the city’s suicide landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge. Natalie Zimmerman’s Islands introduces fifteen casting-call respondents in Los Angeles, interspersed with images of the LA landscape; lonely, desolate, and barely familiar as the great sprawling metropolis most know only as home to the film and television industry.

Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts
Fall/Winter 2006, Vol. 33, No. 2
Traces of life on the thin film of longing

March 1 - May 26, 2007

This multimedia installation draws its images from the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut. Using a soundscape of recorded voices, projected large-scale images, and photographic prints, the installation unveils stereotypes and examines how the authority of photography can get lost in translation. This is the only U.S. venue for this thought-provoking show curated by local art historian and critical theorist Dore Bowen and French media artist Isabelle Massu.

March 1 - May 12, 2007

The exhibition Seeing Beyond Sight is the product of Sound Shadows, a literacy-through-photography class taught by Tony Deifell, Shirley Hand, Dan Partridge, and Jessica Toal from 1992 to 1997 at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, NC. Accompanying the images are the students’ own words and captions, through which we witness the emotional experience of taking pictures as well as the mysterious nature of the creative process. With its ambitious, seemingly paradoxical premise, Seeing Beyond Sight challenges our definitions of art, vision, and perception and what it really means to see.

May 10 - May 20, 2007

SF Camerawork’s First Exposures mentorship program provides urban teens with an opportunity to develop photography skills and explore the medium as a form of self-expression. The Contemporary Jewish Museum and SF Camerawork have partnered on a curriculum for a series of workshops based on the themes in the CJM’s exhibition The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography. Using the Identity Project as a springboard, Exposing Identities features the results of students’ investigations into issues of identity including culture, religion, and race.

June 7 – August 25, 2007

Some Days is the first in a series of concentrated artist projects featuring photographers who live and work in China being presented at SF Camerawork through 2009. Wang Ningde belongs to a generation of young photographers whose work addresses the rapid changes taking place in 21st century China. Although a photojournalist by trade, Wang maintains a strong belief that photography is a tool for self-expression and makes non-documentary, conceptual photography. His work invites the viewer into a world where subtle narrative drama expressively connects memory with the reality of the present moment.

SF Camerawork’s Chinese Artists Series is supported by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and the Columbia Foundation.

June 7 – August 25, 2007

Kelli Connell
Morgan Konn
Tarrah Krajnak & Wilka Roig

The Spitting Image honors the anniversary of the feminist art movement and features the work of four young women artists who, each in her own way, investigate the gestures, costumes, and settings embedded in the representation of female identity. Bay Area photographer Morgan Konn provokes the notion of identity envy in a body of work called Her House, Her Clothes in which Konn gains access to women’s houses and photographs herself inhabiting their domestic space and dressing in their clothes. For her series Double Life, Midwest-based photographer Kelli Connell employs digital techniques to construct seemingly authentic pictures of a relationship between two women, but which, in fact, use the same woman subject in each role. Collaborative artists Tarrah Krajnak and Wilka Roig look closely at the relationship of photography to identity, to the ways in which identity is not only performed, but performed for the camera.

The Spitting Image is supported by a grant from the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation.

June 7 – July 14, 2007

Camerawork’s New Works Program was designed to foster the creation and presentation of work by notable emerging artists who explore innovative, and often challenging, visions through photography and related visual media.

Amy Regalia’s exquisite photographic prints focus on the offbeat subject matter of piles of yard waste in suburban California towns, with an emphasis on the regions surrounding San Jose.

SF Camerawork’s New Works Program is supported by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts.

June 20 – August 5, 2007

The Mills Museum Studies Workshop engages students in basic questions about the nature of art museums and curatorial practices, particularly the proper handling and care of works of art. Their final project is a group-curated exhibition shown in the Mills College Art Museum during the summer or fall semester. This exhibit of over 100 photographs includes images about identity created in conjunction with The Contemporary Jewish Museum, photos exploring relationships culled from the book First Exposures, and work from a public art billboard project on tolerance and acceptance.

July 17 – August 25, 2007

Camerawork’s New Works Program was designed to foster the creation and presentation of work by notable emerging artists who explore innovative, and often challenging, visions through photography and related visual media.

The modesty of Greg Halpern’s noir-like images of his hometown of Buffalo, NY reflects the artist’s overall conceptual approach to his subject matter. The installation is conceived as a series of visual sentences laid out in staccato form. Halpern notes, “How does one visually approach such a place and its people, without resorting to cliché, without causing insult, and without simplifying? It is as if sitting bedside, respectfully struggling to comprehend the significance of a dwindling life, both troubled and inspired by what appears to be an amalgam of greatness, misery, and mystery.”

SF Camerawork’s New Works Program is supported by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts.

September 6 – November 17, 2007

Ursula Biemann
Matthew Hughes Boyko
Jeanne C. Finley & John Muse
Mary Magsamen & Stephan Hillerbrand
Lars Laumann
Jenny Vogel
Matt Wolf

SF Camerawork’s galleries become a global gathering place, a research lab, and an ongoing experiment in visual communication with this interactive exhibit of work sourced from and inspired by the Internet. This generative exhibition provides access to an evolving global line-up of artists, filmmakers, writers, curators, and other cultural producers, transforming the gallery into an interactive, socially-engaged space, experimenting with expanded notions of how the traditional institutional 'machine' functions and can act as a connective tissue between audience, artists, and ideas.

There is always a machine between us is supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, and Alexander Lloyd.

September 6 – October 20, 2007

Camerawork’s New Works Program was designed to foster the creation and presentation of work by notable emerging artists who explore innovative, and often challenging, visions through photography and related visual media.

Matthias Geiger’s Tide series concerns itself with the ebb and flow of people as they pass through time and place. Using a computer-based technique of layering the still images he shoots, Geiger erases the physical presence of the figures in his work, leaving just a trace of their forms in the landscape. These almost metaphysical presences haunt places of transit and places of momentary rest.

October 23 – November 17, 2007

The James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography is a biennial award administered by SF Camerawork and The San Francisco Foundation, given in recognition of artistic achievements by California-born artists. Established by the Trust of James D. Phelan, former San Francisco Mayor, United States Senator and arts supporter, the annual competition makes awards in a variety of disciplines.

The 2007 winners are Geoffrey Ellis, Apollonia Morrill, and Walt Odets. Honorable mentions include Rebecca Goldfarb, Kirk Thompson, and Sergio De La Torre.

The 2007 jurors are Daniell Cornell, Curator of American Art and Director of Contemporary Art Projects, de Young Museum; and Lisa Dent, Director, Dent Gallery.