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Mark Klett: After the Ruins presents
photographs of juxtaposed imagery of past and present sites of the San
Francisco 1906 earthquake by Arizona-based photographer Mark Klett
(b.1952) in his signature style. For the past two years Klett has been
collecting 1906 images from the Legion of Honor’s Genthe archive, the
Bancroft Library, and various web-based archives, resulting in the
selection of 85 geographical sites. His fieldwork in recreating the
historic shots covered the entire city of San Francisco, from Union Square
to the Presidio, South of Market to the Marina Green, and Mission Dolores
to Cow Hollow. The results are approximately 75 paired photographs
depicting the city then and now, each showing that the two spaces and
times are related. In Klett’s words, “The photographs are more than a
reminder of the power of nature or a warning to arrogance in the face of
it. I also think they are a way to contemplate how we understand time and
our relationship to the past.”
Klett has been photographing the American
West for over 25 years. He directed the Rephotography Survey Project in
the late 1970s, which located and rephotographed the sites of images made
by William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan, and other photographers
surveying the West in the late 19th century. For the Dislocations project,
which is also the subject of a book co-published by the Fine Arts Museums
and UC Press, Klett chose to recreate historic photographs of the 1906 San
Francisco earthquake and fire, the centennial of which is April 18, 2006. |
