Janet Delaney is a fine art photographer who focuses her attention on urban issues. She is currently documenting the rapid transformation of the SoMa district of San Francisco. This area was the focus of her earlier project, South of Market 1978-1986.
Delaney has received three National Endowment for the Arts Grants and the Phelan Award. Her photographs are in collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Art, the de Young Museum, and the Pilara Foundation among others. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally. In 2013 She published South of Market with Mack of London. This series was exhibited in a one-person show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, in 2015. She is now working on Public Matters, her next book of images made in San Francisco circa 1985, to be published in Spring of 2018 by Mack.
Janet lives and works in Berkeley, California.
About ‘South of Market’:
Using photography to call for social change has a long and uneasy history. Books by Eugene Atget, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, and Dorothea Lange were piled high on my desk as I worked on this project. I read contemporary theory on documentary photography by Martha Rosler and Alan Sekula. I collaborated closely with Connie Hatch who helped me to understand the political forces at play.
Fusing the classic work of the early 20th century with the radical theory of the 1980s rendered a new form of document, one that demanded attention through formal beauty while also including the subjects as participants in the creation of this work. I was not neutral. I lived here and these were the stories of my neighbors who I saw everyday.
I used the photographs and text as a way to bring attention to the “ systematic deconstruction of a valid working class neighborhood” as I often wrote in grant proposals. These photographs were meant to give an active voice to those in the community who were being passed over, moved out, and silenced by the interests of the economically powerful.
With the exhibition at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, this project is again asking us to consider how we shape our city’s growth. By looking back at those who lived and worked here more than 35 years ago, we experience a collective civic memory.
If the project succeeds it is because it encourages us to remember, to talk about and to build on this historical knowledge as we work to construct a dynamic and inclusive future.
