matt's pictures

RAD volume 6

This was the second one of these I went to, and the first one I’ve taken any pictures at (that I recall; the last one was last november). It was just this incredible, engaged group that was gathered to talk about art that was happening in the media right then; Childish Gambino’s This is America had just dropped, as had Dirty Computer and one other thing I can’t remember; I think most people talked about the first two. Good discussion, but you really had to be there.

There’s always a theme, and the theme is different every time; the upcoming salon is on wellness. I might talk about book making, and how putting them together is a sort of therapy for me; a way to tie things up at the end of a project.

Speaking of projects: it feels like PROJECT SAN PABLO is coming to a close. I need to get some things scanned, and work on some editing, and then I’ll probably do a zine with the results.

Posted on 2018-06-26T06:08:47Z GMT

dropping in to the mission

This was one of those days on my way to somewhere, when I found myself with some time to kill in the mission. Time to kill, and distance to cover, I suppose. It’s nice to get there during the golden hour, just to see what’s happening. The next post will be about something, I promise. But for now, we’re just in this liminal space.

Posted on 2018-06-25T06:53:45Z GMT

sunday with friends

This was maybe a month ago? again, I could look at my calendar and try to figure it out, but meh. This is a real different post than the last one, but I think it’s just as valuable. It’s important to remember what we have, and what we’re fighting for. Truth and beauty in the people around us. Anyway.

Annie was in town, and the ladies did a bunch of stuff (trip to Sonoma, wine tasting, some kind of pedicures? maybe?), but sunday the whole group of us hung out. Brunch at portal, bottomless mimosas, followed by a brief nap and refresher, trip to the corner store for supplies, and then over to Roger and Olivia’s for multiple kinds of grilled cheeses, literally grilled on a charcoal grill. They were amazing and I was far too busy eating them to take pictures of them.

Today was my first day my new job, working for Chime (the banking startup). It seems like it’s gonna be really nice working there. I think I’m gonna enjoy doing the work they have for me. And that’s all the work talk you get.

Anyway, here’s today.

Posted on 2018-06-21T06:44:34Z GMT

today's anti-fash action

Just got back from this, posting from the phone. Me and about 1000 other people showed up and blocked the road in front of the ICE offices in San Francisco. It may even still be going; the cops were just directing traffic around the crowd; they didn’t seem keen on trying to break it up.

I’ve tried (mostly) to keep faces out of these; because we’re about six months shy of a full blown police state, and there’s no telling how photos of people at protests might be used against the protestors. About half the people there were also broadcasting, though, meaning that me keeping faces out altogether is pretty pointless. The local news media showing up seemed almost redundant. That said, I’m glad they were there.

I couldn’t tell you how many people were there. More than 500 and less than 5000 is my best guess. I wish it was more; I wish the whole damn city were in the streets, yelling “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Immigrants are welcome here!”. This was good though.

Ice protest 2018

Posted on 2018-06-19T22:38:36Z GMT

robin's housewarming

I’m late posting, again. Something about last week was just keeping me down, and also I didn’t want to spend much time at the computer… I was short of things to post, or so I thought, and so I spent a lot of time running around doing stuff, or at least trying to do stuff, and one thing led to another and then I was out of town on the weekend, and here 7 days have passed since I’ve posted (there’s something about promising indefinitely to post every day that dooms me).

This was sometime last month, I think? Robin is this amazing creative genius and his partner Kathryn is important to the olive oil world in ways I don’t entirely understand. Warm, fun, good people, and they just bought a house practically across the street from Sophie and me. “just” is relative, in this case; I think they actually moved in in december, but with all the difficulties of moving and settling in it took quite a while for them to have the capacity to host, I think.

The collection of guests was interesting and eclectic. Food people, journalists, doctors (PhD and MD if memory serves) small children, and more than one errant photographer. There was a spread that was as good as any I’ve seen at a backyard barbecue. The kids (and more than some of the adults) were super into picking avocados off the tree in the yard.

One last thing: you may have noticed that these don’t have black borders but still look like color film photos… that’s because I had them scanned at the lab, and the lab can’t get the extra little bit of margin to get the borders with the full roll scanner. I’m fine with it, actually, because if I decided to make prints I’ll have to scan anyway, and I can include the border then. And it’s hours and hours of work that I don’t have to do.