STREET

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street without words (recitative)

street without words (recitative) (1991-2005) is a visual analogue of the downtown life of an American metropolis, the Union Square district of San Francisco.

to dwell, for a photographer, is to swirl, to call swirl down to footsteps, to raise stillness up cascadingly, to beckon breachingly the moment before and the moment after the right-now-instinct, what is commonly called “an instant,” and not swooningly to drop hints that restore one moment’s faith in another’s equal distinctness—to dwell: to interrogate the most public of public realms in san francisco in a flinging of glances across invisible boundaries, to court mild admonishment and slight astonishment, to intervene visually in the flow of life and capital—to dwell: through photographs to enter into the play of desire and the low-grade thrall of the showcase district of the boutique city of the great debtor empire of the earth, to pace desire to the eye of the walker and the tides of streetcorners, to probe the possibilities of free, democratic interaction in the only area of the city where there is something close to a true cross section of the city’s varied populations, and at the same time: to parry the mute interiorities of strangers who inhabit the public realm as an extension of their own private realms, amid the awkward comforts of high commerce, and the half-governed energies of the streets—to dwell:

—jason francisco, from the introduction

Selected photographs

Joseph Selle, San Francisco photographer, 1930s-1970s