Hail S.F.

Related Content

• Tea and Sweets
  August 31, 2011
• Within Spitting Distance
  March 16, 2011
• Hot Probs
  April 27, 2011
• Tea Dance
  February 16, 2011
• Blue Plate Special
  November 3, 2010

More About

• Sean McFarland
• Robert Mailer Anderson
• Whitney Hubbs
• Peter Plate
• Michelle Tea

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Photographer Sean McFarland does wonderful things to San Francisco. He takes countless photos of particular settings -- from buildings, parks, and streetscapes to freeway overpasses -- cuts them up, and arranges them back into the recognizable by hand. Then he rephotographs the results, removing evidence of his handiwork. The results are surreal, like a dream you had before you moved here or an intoxicated, foggy walk home after you did, before familiarity arrived to deaden the senses. His delicate, hazy, nearly model-like scenes magically tweak what you know to be true. He’s part of a show championing the city, “Let Us Now Praise San Francisco,” curated by literary showman Robert Mailer Anderson. It features three photographers (Gregory Halpern and Whitney Hubbs join McFarland) and three writers, including gritty city chroniclers Peter Plate and Michelle Tea, whose short stories appear alongside the photographs in a book. And Anderson had everybody create new work, providing a portrait of the city that’s barely a month old, a curatorial feat well worthy of its own praise.
July 12-Aug. 16, 2008