Dave Glass: Central City 1970-2016

On view October 5 - December 30, 2023

EXTENDED THROUGH January 20, 2024!

Opening Reception on October 5, 2023 | 5:30-7:30pm

Artist Talk: Dave Glass with Adrian Martinez & Austin Leong December 7, 2023 | 5:30-7:30pm

at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

Dave Glass, a prolific San Francisco street photographer with a working class perspective, shares a selection of images made in the Tenderloin that documents its denizens and iconic establishments across four decades.

Central City 1970-2016 is a selection of images made in and around the Tenderloin by prolific street photographer Dave Glass, whose roving eye frequently landed on the TL during his 50+ year photography practice. A San Francisco native who worked for three decades as a laundromat owner-operator and appliance repairman, Glass traversed the city, a camera always in his truck, shooting from the unique vantage point of someone who frequently bears witness to locals’ most intimate, everyday spaces. The TL’s densely populated residential hotels, apartments, and adjacent laundry facilities meant Glass spent a great deal of time in the neighborhood and thus made many pictures here; but as he puts it, “if you live in San Francisco for any time at all, it’s impossible not to have a relationship with the Tenderloin.” 

SF’s iconic architecture and sharply angled streets figure prominently in his work, as do cars (often with a charismatic patina), and his oeuvre could function as a lyric history of the city in photographs. In taking a long view with Glass, we see cycles of urban decay, reconfiguration, and gentrification, alongside the more resilient and persistent aspects of our city: the routines, rituals, and recurrences of its denizens that establish continuity over time. In his photographs of the Tenderloin and Mid-Market area, this means a tall pour from an old barkeep, a parade down Market Street, and the familiar glow of the corner store’s neon sign. 

Glass’ passion is black-and-white photography made with vintage cameras; he primarily  develops his film at home. While his subjects often communicate a time and place, his technical preferences and consistent, well-defined aesthetic mean some of his images belie the year or even decade in which they were taken. He shares the imagistic vocabulary and techniques of street photographers like Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand as well as of social documentary photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. 

He frequently references his education in the “blue collar” photography program at San Francisco City College, where the coursework was geared towards technical skills and craft so that photography could be utilized as an occupation, a profession. There, Glass’s street impulses were nurtured studying photojournalism with Morrie Camhi, who famously documented Sephardic Jews who remained in Greece after the Holocaust, Mexican American migrant farmers, and people experiencing the California penal system. Glass, however, kept his homegrown talent focused on San Francisco, resulting in a body of work with an incredibly deep and nuanced local perspective. 

In the late ‘80s, Glass enrolled in a photography class at UC Berkeley Extension’s Laguna Street Campus, primarily for darkroom access.  It was there that he had a formative encounter with French-born photographer and educator Michelle Vignes. Vignes worked for the godfather of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson, at Magnum Photos in Paris before relocating to San Francisco in 1965. In her new home, she documented the Native Occupation of Alcatraz, blues and gospel musicians in the East Bay, Vietnam War protesters, and others over a long, storied career. Vignes’ artistic lineage resonated with Glass, who had alighted to Paris after his stint at City College and during the Vietnam War. This educational experience had a long-lasting impact on Glass, influencing and sustaining his photographic practice. Now, 50+ years into that practice, rich threads of social documentary arc through his own diligent observation of San Francisco and its streets. 

Dave Glass’s origins are in the mom-and-pop, small business life, in which local practitioners are the sinew that connects San Francisco’s multitudinous neighborhoods and cultures. Born to Polish immigrants in the Western Addition, Glass came of age in his family’s liquor store during the come down from the Hippie era and at the height of Redevelopment in the Fillmore. Arguably, the most striking subjects in his expansive archive are the “shabby Victorian” houses of his first neighborhood being lifted off their foundations and relocated to make way for new construction in the name of urban progress. These surreal spectacles of impermanence and displacement are emblematic of San Francisco and the tumultuous relationship amongst city dwellers, urban designers, and the built environment. 

The images in Central City 1970-2016 aren’t monolithic or symbolic. Instead, they survey the guts of our city, its humanity, and its streets thrumming with life. Nine black-and-white photographs hang in the TLM gallery wall, developed and printed by the artist. They depict faces of Tenderloin folks at work and at play: protesting, dancing, or simply mugging for the passing shutterbug. A complementary set of five color images lie in a vitrine, depicting some of the Tenderloin’s iconic small businesses such as Original Joe’s, Ha-Ra, and The 21 Club. These establishments exude strong personalities much like the neighborhood characters who occupy their bar stools, sit up on their stoops, and peruse their shelves for a nightcap. 

Glass’ photography has exhibited work in both the United States and France, and he has appeared in numerous publications. His most recent published work, Wash Castle (illetante books, 2023), was a collaboration with Austin Leong & Adrian Martinez. Previously, Glass has furnished images for the Tenderloin Museum’s permanent exhibition, as well as for public programs exploring its cultural history, such as The Blue Lamp Remembered. Now, TLM is honored to engage more deeply with Glass’s work by exhibiting this selection of images made in and around the Tenderloin throughout the arc of the artist’s long and prolific career. 

Dave Glass: Central City 1970-2016 is on view from October 5 - December 30, 2023 EXTENDED through January 20, 2024 in the Tenderloin Museum’s gallery space. An opening reception will be held on October 5th from 5:30-7:30pm in concert with SF First Thursday Art Walk in the Tenderloin. Glass will give an artist talk in conversation with his collaborators, fellow photographers, and co-directors of the Tenderloin’s Book and Job Gallery, Adrian Martinez & Austin Leong on December 7th from 5:30-7:30pm, also in concert with SF First Thursday Art Walk.