SF Camerawork has a new home at the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture’s waterfront campus beside Haines Gallery, Museo Italo Americano and Magic Theater.
The plan, moving forward, is to maintain a hybrid online and in-person model, as Camerawork welcomes the public into its new brick-and-mortar home. The gallery, which once housed Hang Art and the SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery — and, long before that, Fort Mason’s blacksmith shop — is a light-filled space overlooking the marina. Breathtaking views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands bring to mind the natural sublime that has long been a mainstay of California photography.
The prints are large and lustrous, the gorgeous color palettes of the enlarged botanical samples, from roses to autumnal leaves to clumps of dirt, standing dramatically against solid black backgrounds. The biggest print, “Underneath the Resting Tree,” mounted directly on the gallery’s rear wall, shows a piece of an Oak tree from a plantation in Bristol, Virginia, where some of Lucas’ ancestors were enslaved.