Bill Jacobson And J. John Priola

Tuesday, September 20, 2022 7:00 pm PDT
Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94102

This event will take place at the Tenderloin Museum. Find directions HERE

 

LIMITED TO 75 ATTENDEES DUE TO COVID SAFETY.
All attendees must be fully vaccinated and masks are required and must be worn at this event.
Please bring photo-proof of vaccination, preferably a SMART Health Card.

 
 

All photos © Bill Jacobson

 

About Bill Jacobson

Bill Jacobson (b. 1955, Norwich, Connecticut) is widely known for his photographs of the figure, landscape, and object. He began his signature, indistinct images in 1989, and has since been exhibiting in galleries and museums throughout the US and Europe. His early Interim Portraits feature shadowy, pale figures that evoke the loss experienced by many during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The blurred subjects underline the futility of capturing a true human likeness in both portraiture and memory. Subsequent photographic explorations include Songs of Sentient Beings, Thought Series, A Series of Human Decisions, and more recently Place (Series). His work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, SFMOMA the Victoria and Albert Museum, and many others. He was the recipient of a 2012 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and a 2016 fellowship from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation. Jacobson has published six monographs. when is a place will be published in 2023 by Hatje Cantz. He holds a BFA from Brown University and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

 

All photos © J.John Priola

 

About J.John Priola

J. John Priola, a is a contemporary visual artist who using photography. His work is known refined print quality and presentation. Priola's work has been included in numerous exhibitions, such as In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, "Prospect '96" at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany. His work was part of a five-year traveling exhibition “Picturing Eden” launching from the George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography and Film. His work is included in many private and corporate collections and museum collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of ArtThe Contemporary Museum in Honolulu Hawaii. He is the recipient of awards such as the John Anson Kittredge Fund, Aaron Siskind Foundation and the California Arts Council. A new monograph is being published by Kehrer Verlag this year. It features essays from Rita Bullwinkel and Claire Daigle, and features a conversation with Alec Soth, both speak of the Anthropocene. John Priola has taught in many degree programs such as SF State, CCA, ICP Bard and he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for 25 years. He is represented by Anglim/Trimble Gallery San Francisco Joseph Bellows in La Jolla and Weston Gallery in Carmel.

Exhibition Dates: September 1 - October 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 15, 2022, 6 PM

Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94102
(DIRECTIONS HERE)

American Trip, 1975 is a never before exhibited selection of early work by artist/photographer Bill Jacobson. The images, made in San Francisco’s Tenderloin at a pivotal moment in the neighborhood’s history, are infused with dreamlike splendor and beguiling candor. 

The photographs came from the young artist’s formative journey into the heart of an unfamiliar and great city– thus, the notion of a “trip.” Originally from a small East Coast town, Jacobson spent his junior year of college on the opposite coast, studying at the San Francisco Art Institute. San Francisco engendered a cultural counterpoint that energized Jacobson both personally and artistically, and the time for the young artist was pivotal. The dense, multitudinous thrum of the Tenderloin intrigued him as an environment in which he could fully dedicate himself to self-discovery, through both observation as well as image making. Jacobson depicts vibrant bar scenes populated by pensioners and long-term denizens. Significantly, there’s also an photograph of porn celebrity Marilyn Chambers at The Mitchell Brothers’ Theater, emblematic of the neighborhood’s sensational nightlife. Together, these photographs point to the transitory nature of the Tenderloin, as well as its function as an enclave of working-class housing and as a refuge for society’s outcasts. 

These images foreshadow some of the artist’s eventual dedicated lines of aesthetic inquiry. Jacobson’s celebrated and iconic Interim Portraits, along with his related explorations with defocused photography throughout the 1990s, explore the porous relationships between abstraction and evocative, haunting imagery. While frequently contextualized as symbolic of the AIDS epidemic, Jacobson’s work from that decade broadly evokes emotional responses to our relationships with others, as well as loss, the power of memory and its shortcomings, erosion, and lacunae. His earlier American Trip 1975 resonates with a similar deep yet fleeting visual energy, exemplifying how people can both seem to exist in place while implying the tentativeness of human existence.

American Trip, 1975 also tells the story of the relationship between humans and the built environment, as well as a neighborhood on the cusp of change. These images were made in 1975, the same year of the Fall of Saigon, after which Bay Area bound Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees landed in the low-rent Tenderloin district. This influx of families began a change in the neighborhood’s stature, away from the liminal zone of boarding houses, single workers, and misfits, and toward a more diverse, politically galvanized, and self-aware community. As such, Jacobson’s photographs document the eve of this generational shift, portraying the Tenderloin in all of its infamous grandeur and mystery with the enthusiasm of an artist encountering this extraordinary neighborhood all for the first time. 

Exhibition Dates: September 17 - October 20, 2022

Catharine Clark Gallery, 248 Utah St, San Francisco, CA 94103
(DIRECTIONS HERE)

Exhibition: GIVE & TAKE

Exhibition Dates: September 19 - December 16, 2022
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 22, 2022, 6 PM

Saint Joseph's Arts Foundation, 1401 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103
(DIRECTIONS HERE)

This event is presented in partnership with the Tenderloin Museum. Students are always welcome to attend PhotoAlliance lectures for free. Please present your current student ID at the door.

PhotoAlliance believes in an accessible, inclusive and supportive arts community. The income we receive from ticket sales offsets our costs and allows us to pay artists for their work. If you are unable to afford the admission cost of a PhotoAlliance event, we welcome you to join our volunteer team and attend for free, more information HERE.

 
 
 
 

Tenderloin Museum celebrates the rich history of one of San Francisco's most overlooked neighborhoods. Through history exhibitions, resident-led walking tours, community programs, and the presentation of original artwork, the Tenderloin Museum invites all comers to learn about the roots of our dynamic neighborhood, and reclaim our city's past and future. The 31 blocks of the Tenderloin District are a microcosm of San Francisco, peopled by immigrants and iconoclasts, artists and activists, sinners and saints. All are welcome to join us in telling its story.