I Live Here:SF Retrospective November 5, 2010

SOMArts Cultural Center presents I Live Here:SF, a major exhibition of San Francisco-based artist Julie Michelle’s ongoing photographic portrait and storytelling series that enables the public to share the spirit and fascinating layers of this city through the words and faces of those who live here. I Live Here:SF is an open invitation to San Francisco residents to enjoy and participate in sharing the many facets of life in this city with each other and the world at large. The project has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED Arts Online, SPUR’s The Urbanist, and the SF Weekly, focusing on how Michelle’s subjects interact with the city through participatory portraiture and personal storytelling. Throughout its myriad nano-neighborhoods and micro-climates, eager San Franciscans share the nooks and crannies of the day-to-day places that mark their lives, as well as provide glimpses into the way that the city itself has become an integral part of their identities.

The exhibition at SOMArts Cultural Center will highlight a collection of Michelle’s best photo work displayed as wall pieces and augmented by large-scale sculptural installations. Also included are works by another San Francisco artist, Chris Rusak. Using text, Rusak expands the vision of the I Live Here:SF project by manipulating participants’ stories to demonstrate the inner structure of the city’s collective experience. His printmaking is a metaphor for the story-collecting process of photography.

In the gallery’s video annex space, I Live Here:SF will showcase Rick Prelinger’s Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4: selections from the historic Prelinger Film Archive, which grew to over 60,000 pieces before being sold to the Library of Congress.

Official Website: http://www.somarts.org/2010/09/15/i-live-here-sf-coming-soon-save-the-dates/