Laying Low, Trying To Figure It All Out...

Well it’s January, and 2025 already feels like a slog. I guess I just thought we were headed in another direction. The hate and the chaos is completely draining and seemingly inescapable. I was in Mexico for a spell last week, having a perfectly civil conversation with a guy from Nebraska, which he abruptly ended when he discovered I was from San Francisco. Who could blame him, apparently “liberals” now cause forest fires. It’s just exhausting.

San Francisco, Dystopian Hell-Scape. Please, stay away…

A prolonged news and media fast has left me thinking about the amount of time I sink into social media and the increasing lack of any sort of return for the effort, let alone benefit to my own work in any way. In the wake of Meta’s refusal to moderate content, even my once benign Instagram feed is becoming pretty disgusting. I think my days of maintaining any sort of presence there are numbered.

Either way, it’s led me to think about why I started chasing pictures to begin with. It’s the permanence of the thing. The object itself, and the story behind it. I’ve grown weary of fleeting images, flickering by in a feed, once scrolled past, gone forever, lost in the ether of the platform, monetized for a moment to benefit those that could change the world for the better with the stroke of a pen, and choose not to. I’ve become exhausted by platforms that deliver nothing. Social media is a disease.

Perhaps I’ll try a little different approach and simply post my work here, write about it, and share it with those who are interested. It feels, oddly enough, much more productive than screaming into the void of the algorithm.

I put together a small exhibition some years ago, “Unwritten Notes” was comprised entirely of work made “elsewhere.” On the road, in transit, away from my home. Disjointed perhaps, but very autobiographical. For years I’ve toyed with the idea of putting a larger body of text to the images, stories behind the pictures, now seems like as good a time as any to get started.

So if you’re getting this, expect more. I never believed art could save the world, but it can’t hurt and it can keep me sane. So in the face of all this manufactured chaos and disinformation and hate and willful ignorance I'm making pictures, experiencing things, sharing with my community, and publishing whatever I can, wherever I can.

Stay tuned…

An entirely random collection of updates...

Opening party went off without a hitch. Truly humbled by the amount of people that turned out, the place was packed. The work is still up into September, check it out at Waystone in North Beach if you’re in the neighborhood. A few snaps from opening night are below…

A few of my images have been selected for publication in the forth coming Best of Model Society book. I’m a bit late to the game as I’ve been off the grid for a week, the Kickstarter is still running, though the project was fully funded in just 2 hours. Pretty amazing, to say the least. Either way, take a look, should be a pretty epic collection of work, link below…

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/minds-eye/a-celebration-of-human-beauty-nude-and-figurative-fine-art

On a more solemn note, my grandmother passed on Monday, not unexpectedly, but still difficult. She was 94 years old, born in Moberly, Missouri in 1930, moved to Detroit when her father went to work for the railroad. Married, seven children, 11 grandchildren, and 2 great grandchildren. She lived all over the world, Tokyo, Seoul, Newport Beach, San Francisco… as far as I’m concerned, she might as well have been an astronaut.

Photograph below of Billie Ruth Leblanc and her great-grandson Thomas (my son) in 2018 when he was born.

Don't Call It frisco...

Well, it’s officially on the wall and out in the world. Twenty-seven of my original prints are on display at Waystone in North Beach from July 15th to mid September. Comprised entirely of images made on the streets of San Francisco, the work represents essentially 20 years of me wasting time, wandering around The City, fiddling about with a camera. And while this is just a small sample of the images I’ve made around town, it definitely represents the images that I’m closest to personally. At the end of the day, it’s all pretty autobiographical.

For me the camera has always been an excuse to be out in the world. I’m no go-getter, rarely a participant, typically on the sidelines, not here to hustle, certainly in no hurry, I’ve spent my life on the periphery, just sort of taking it in. I’m a chronic observer, often to my detriment. The camera is the justification, the photographs are the record.

Either way, if you’re in The City, come by and take a look. I’ll be throwing a little opening party on July the 27th, Waystone in North Beach, 1609 Powell Street at Green, 7pm. There’ll be live music, libations, and a bunch of old photographs from the greatest city in the world, Baghdad by the Bay, Fog City, SF, The City by The Bay, Old San Francisco. Just please, don’t call it Frisco…

For a larger take of the work on display, visit josephszymanski.com/san-francisco

As always, for prints, visit the shop, and please don’t hesitate to reach out for custom sizes, etc.

So I've Been Busy...

I decided, at some point, a few months back now, that it was time to start printing. After all, I’ve always said that a photograph isn’t finished until you put in on paper. The vast majority of my work has never existed beyond the negative, and is never really seen outside of the digital world. This bores me terribly.

It also occurred to me that I’m sitting on an archive of images from San Francisco, some of which I think are pretty ok, spanning almost 25 years and it was time to do something.

So I’ve been locked in the darkroom, printing old street pictures from the last couple decades. It’s reminded me why I’ve stuck with analog materials all these years, I enjoy the process, I love making things with my hands, and I much prefer the idea that a photograph is a three dimensional object that you can hold and hang on a wall and give away, rather than the digital dust they’ve become.

I’ll be hanging some work in July in San Francisco, details to come, hopefully a dry run to something larger. If nothing else, it’ll be a wild party with a bunch of old pictures to look at, could be worse...

In other news, I made a stack of postcards in the darkroom on a whim. Shoot me an email if you want one in the mail. I love mailing stuff, it’s a thing, I can’t explain it.

Notes From The West Bank, 20 Years On...

Village of Dir Ibziya, outside Ramallah, The West Bank, July of 2002.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the time I spent in the West Bank so many years ago. Seems like another lifetime ago, probably because it was. So much has changed, and then again, so little has.

Twenty years ago I was naive kid with a camera who thought he had a decent handle on the way things work in the world who very abruptly discovered that was not in fact the case.

I won't pretend that I don't have opinions. I certainly don't have any answers, that I’m sure of. The death toll is nothing short of catastrophic. What really blows me away is the kids in these photographs are now older than I was when I made them. And here we are, still at it.