THE PHOTOGRAPHERS:


Alan George

Last year, I caught one of the very best photography exhibits in all San Francisco not in one of its few premiere photo galleries, but in the lobby of a busy downtown office building. The photographs were of Alan George's stunningly beautiful photographs of eccentrically manicured flora found on San Francisco's residential streets. Not limited to oddly shaped flora, Alan finds beauty in the most Painfully Ordinary of subjects ignored and disdained by tourist and native alike. This is San Francisco through the backdoor- and no matter how worn or seemingly inconsequential the subject matter, there's an overall sense of beauty and grandeur that permeates all of George's work. SB

John Darwell

I recognise so much in John Darwell's series Not Starting From Here. We both live in England's North-West albeit at different ends of the region, and I recognise that light. I know a man like the one leaning on a wall on a housing estate similar to the one I grew up on. I recognise that dining room, the wallpaper, the tablecloth, perhaps laid ready for a "Full English" at a Bed & Breakfast, or maybe the more up market guesthouse, that most quintessential of a stopover for the British traveller. And these are the photographs of a traveller, a traveller contemplating the familiar and wishing to understand a landscape and in the process showing us a little more of things that can be taken for granted. An Englishman's hike in the style of Wainwright, rather than a spitting "Road Trip" by Kerouac. MP

David Wolf

David Wolf's deceptively simple "snapshots" intrigued and puzzled me from the start. His Left Behind photos are, on first glance, not dissimilar from countless other urban street, still life's taken by countless other photographers of discarded or misplaced household objects. The only difference- his work! And there lies the rub. Wolf's photos retain their sense of wonderment, from initial sidewalk visualization to final photographic representation. I'm not sure I'll ever know quite why, but whatever it may be- it's what (in the hands of an artist) elevates a camera from simple recording device to instrument of transformation. SB

George Georgiou

The digital age has made it relatively easy to convert from color to black and white practically on demand, but even today there are few photographers who can shoot either equally well. Classic names like James Nachtwey and Carl DeKyzer automatically come to mind, and as of last year, seems you can add George Georgiou to that small and hallowed pantheon. Although the latter's name and recognition may yet be emerging, his talent and ability have most definitely arrived. SB