Hamburger Eyes Photos Capture Nudists, Elvis Impersonators, and David Hasselhoff

Powerhouse Books (Feb. 2008), $35

Ray Potes, one of the head honchos at the San Francisco–based photo mag Hamburger Eyes, thinks of his biannual black-and-white zines as movies. "I can see the plotlines," he said recently, sitting outside the darkrooms at Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter in the Mission. "Like, here's the slow part, here's the fast part, and it ends badly or ends well." If that's the case, Powerhouse Books' coffeetable tome Hamburger Eyes: Inside Burgerworld is the 7-year-old photo crew's debut feature-length film. Shot by more than a dozen lensmen ranging from Potes, his brother David, and regular Hamburger contributor Stefan Simikich to respected elders Michael Jang, Ted Pushinsky, and Bill Daniel, among others, this gripping flick is a streetwise documentary with flashes of action, romance, mystery and humor. The photos, which appear without captions or descriptions, span about a 30-year period from the 1970s to the present. The book opens with a crouching limo driver dressed as Elvis, wearing a salesman's sneer as he beckons the camera to take a ride. It ends with a dozing Eagles fan slumped on Muni, face frozen into a slack-jawed aria. Between the wacky and the weary are 200 pages of plotlines you'd otherwise miss in a blink: Dogs snarl, riots rage, potatoes fry, drunks snooze, cars flame, and a young David Hasselhoff is both dazed and confused. Foreshadowing — a sign reading "It's going to get worse" — presages scenes of a dude getting clocked in the jaw or Willie Brown taking notes by a near-naked hippie. When the final frames flicker to a close, you're left with Hamburger's colliding visual narratives of the hectic yet humorous reality that is urban existence.