South of Market

South of Market by Janet Delaney is a book about how much San Francisco, in particular the SOMA (SOuth of MArket) neighborhood is being changed by an influx of development and money. Sounds pretty typical right? Google and Twitter move in and push all the residents out. But, here’s the twist....most of the photos in this book are from the late 1970s/early 1980s. While SOMA is being gentrified today, an earlier wave hit this working class neighborhood forty or so years ago with the construction of the Moscone Center and a promise of a “New San Francisco”. And just like modern days, the artists lived in this working class neighborhood and were also pushed out. Janet Delaney was one of those artists and documented the transformation and death of the neighborhood with her large format camera and printed in her color darkroom in her SOMA apartment. The photos remained mainly unseen for over thirty years until the DeYoung Museum (among others) exhibited the work in the 2010s. Janet Delaney is still shooting in SOMA as it changes. Her photos of this and protest movements in the mid-1980s (another book) are political photos without appearing to be standard news and media coverage. If art can make a difference, and be beautiful, this book is a good example.