Around Group F.64

Explore the legacy of Group f.64, a collective of 11 Bay Area photographers who, in 1932, organized around a simple aim: to make photographs that rivaled paintings. Tonight, hear more about the group and its influence on subsequent generations from the Curator and Head of Photography at SFMOMA, Erin O’Toole. Janet Delaney, Zig Jackson, and Ray Potes, three artists featured in the exhibition Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography, will then discuss their practices, exploring how their unique perspectives and creative approaches have expanded upon that tradition or subverted it.

About the Speakers

Janet Delaney is a fine art photographer whose work explores the social and political dynamics of urban life. Her books include South of Market (2013), documenting a 1980s San Francisco neighborhood; Public Matters (2018), capturing public life during the Reagan era; and Red Eye to New York (2021), portraying 1980s Manhattan. She is currently working on a sequel to South of Market, focusing on tech’s impact on her former neighborhood, and a new book, Too Many Products, Too Much Pressure, about her father’s life as a mid-20th-century Los Angeles salesman. Delaney received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020 and three NEA grants. Her work is held in major institutions including SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, and the High Museum. She has exhibited widely in the US and abroad. Delaney earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and taught at UC Berkeley. She lives and works in Berkeley.

Zig Jackson grew up in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota and began photographing while attending a high school for Indigenous children in Utah. Jackson’s conceptual, black-and-white photographs employ humor to address the geopolitics of settler colonialism and challenge misconceptions of Indigenous peoples as a vanishing community. Jackson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021 and the Beaumont Newhall Award for Photographic Excellence in 2015. His teaching career includes positions at Mount Holyoke College, Michigan State University, and the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Ray Potes has been shooting photos and making zines since age 14. Today he edits and publishes Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine. Publishing since 2001, Hamburger Eyes is inspired by the traditions that began with National Geographic and LIFE Magazine and hopes to revitalize the sensation of photography as a craft as well as a tool to record and document. Hamburger Eyes has produced over 200 titles of zines, magazines, and books alongside countless exhibitions, commissions, and collaborations of all shapes and sizes.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance. Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.