San Francisco, 2015

San Francisco, 2015

It's probably not great to explain why I made a photograph. A photograph should be able to stand alone and speak for itself. I’m going to break that rule a little.

My previous post was a flat, straight-on look through a doorway to a public handball court in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Abstractly, looked at with the eyes unfocused, it’s a flat field of straight-edge geometries of rich green, brown, and various shades of gray. That gray surface is probably 15 feet beyond the green plane.

Focused, it’s a little bit creepy, with hints of a prison-like setting or desolation. And frankly, it felt a little bit creepy when I encountered this space almost nine years ago. As I passed through the spaces, I was never quite sure what I might find around each corner. In the late 1970s, I lived about two blocks from Golden Gate Park, and I visited it often. I’d never seen this building before.

I took a small series of photographs that day in the surrounding area over a period of less than five minutes. This series of photographs began at 5:40:44 PM PST and ended at 5:44:34 PM PST. A sampling of those photographs is shown in the slide show above.

..

5:40:44

It had been a mostly sunny afternoon, but fog began rolling in during the late afternoon. Fog with cold breezes. A large lawn with perfect light and kids playing soccer caught my eye. Some of the parents are wearing coats a sign of the cold.

 5:41:36

I turned around and noticed a large blockhouse slowly being covered by too close and neglected park trees and weeds. It was large and looked a little dated and worn. I wondered what it was.

 5:42:38

I got closer. It housed a series of handball courts. There was a long, dark tunnel entrance with a blue bench. Frankly, it looked a little creepy, or like a trap to me. Hmmm.

 5:43:18

I turned around to see what else there might be nearby to shoot.

 5:43:57

Ahh, what the heck. I walked through the long tunnel and entered an atrium of doorways. The walls had recently been repainted in a patchwork fashion to cover graffiti I suppose. The flatness of the spaces made for interesting 2D compositions.

 5:44:34

I peeked through and found the strong green door, the screen over its window, the padlock, and the large gray walls.

#archivesrummaging