This body of work began as a collaboration with the San Francisco State University’s Labor and Archive Research Center. The images highlight places of labor in the Bay Area. The focus of the project was the Longshoreman and their work places, meeting halls, and the site of the Maritime and General Strike of 1934. However, with the Longshoremen’s diminished power, heavy industry and shipping relocated to Oakland, and the rise of the financial and business centers in San Francisco, the Bay Area has experienced a divergence and diversity of wealth, power and population. Because of this I have expanded my research to focus on other significant industries that have created Diasporas to the area which include WWII buildings and structures, the financial institutions created by the Gold Rush, and Silicone Valley office parks that replaced the valley’s orchards.
As the New Topographers sought to show the realistic imprint man was placing on rural environments, I have endeavored to show the
cyclical patterns of change as it occurs in the urban landscape. Industries are created, only to be replaced; physical structures in disrepair,
re-appropriated, or completely void of historical context are the only proof they ever existed.
