Rusty Weston says of his series, “Of the Mission | de la Misión”, “People who live or work in San Francisco’s Mission District navigate constant change. The corner store looks familiar, but the restaurant across the street has changed hands several times in recent years. It’s a bustling neighborhood where beauty meets decay, the afterlife seems ever-present, and families overcome stark urban challenges. 

A decade into living here, I set out to deepen my community connection and ask how the Mission, with its distinctive Latino culture, vivid colors, scents, and textures, permeates our lives. These portraits of people who live or work within this historic neighborhood's 1.481 square mile boundaries, celebrate the Mission in ways we may feel but never see. In this series, participants are transported to real or imagined settings to explore how we are all “of the Mission.”

Rusty Weston is a fine art photographer and content creator in San Francisco, CA. A former journalist, Weston's work in portraiture and landscapes explores the stresses that impinge on urban life and the natural world. 

Weston’s “Of the Mission” is a new series of environmental-style portraits celebrating people who live or work in San Francisco’s Mission District — his home for the past decade. In the series a selection of the 58 participants are depicted in digital collages of real or imagined outdoor spaces showcasing how this neighborhood’s distinctive Latino culture, vivid colors, and textures, permeates our lives.  

His photography has appeared in exhibitions in the U.S., Italy, Scotland, and Japan, including at the 2023 de Young Open in S.F. and the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, along with Galerie XII in Santa Monica, Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis, the Harvey Milk Photo Center and Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco. Weston is a member of the Bay Area Photographers Collective.

www.rustyweston.com
www.instagram.com/rusty.weston

Images for sale:

Ashley, Jonathan, Plutarco, Jamila, Maria - 12"H x 18" W
Lisa - 18”H x 12” W
Archival paper
$350 unframed  
Limited edition of 5
Signed on back

Contact: Rusty Weston rusty@rustyweston.com  
 

Paul Braverman says, "Walking down the street and looking from sidewalk to sidewalk, I’m alternately excited, depressed, inspired. But I’m always in love with the visual world. And I want to take all that richness, and all those emotions, and cram every one into my photographs. 

But that’s not how to succeed as an artist, say the experts on the subject. The key, they say, is to create a consistent, identifiable body of work. Art which people can look at and recognize as a Braverman. 

Those experts are asking a lot. Don’t get me wrong. I want to be successful. But it’s hard to be consistent in a world exploding with contradiction. How can I be identifiable when everything is so mysterious?

If you look around this site a little, you’ll see a lot of people. If I can be identified with any particular strain of art, it’s probably the portrait. If done well, a simple portrait conveys unmatched complexity. That simple portrait can reveal both a person’s past—if you accept Coco Chanel’s line that you get the face you deserve—and the present, what she is thinking and feeling right now. A face alive in its environment—at work, in love—is even more powerful. 

To me, Shelby Lee Adams is the exemplar in the field. My all-too-brief art education includes a week-long seminar with Shelby, who taught me lessons I carry with me to this day.

Look a little deeper, particularly in the “Transformations” section, and you’ll see familiar objects that have transformed themselves into something unknown. The portraits and these transformative pictures are the two most important currents in my work. 

The Transformations got their start one night when I saw that a window in my living room was admitting a circus of light from an array of sources that I had always taken for granted—streetlights, passing cars, whatever. These lights were playing all over the ceiling and the back wall. When this most familiar of spaces became something unknown I knew enough to grab a camera, lay on my back, and capture what seemed as fleeting as the Northern Lights. 

From that day forward, I kept my eyes open. A display like that is rare but it only takes the occasional bite to keep you fishing. Edward Weston made a career out of showing routine objects transformed into something unknown. Weston, somehow, could do it at will. I’m not quite there yet.

Obviously, my work goes far beyond the two categories mentioned above. Worshippers at church, athletes on the playground, buildings rusting where they stand. I love it all. That love for the visual world—even the visual world at its most sad and distressing—is the one indispensable quality for a photographer. I have that love in spades and I’m working on the techniques that will enable me to communicate my vision to the world. If I can put the combination together . . . Watch Out!"

Photos for Sale-

In Fort Greene Park—16x20
Fine art paper
$350 unframed
Edition of 10


East Village Woman—16x16
Fine art paper
$350 unframed
Edition of 10


Afterwards—16x20
Fine art paper
$350 unframed
Edition of 10


Vietnam Veteran—16x20
Fine art paper
$350 unframed
Edition of 10


Community Books, Brooklyn—20x16
Fine art paper
$350 unframed
Edition of 10


God's Only Demons M.C.—16x20
Fine art paper
#350 unframed
Edition of 10

Contact artist at paul@paulbraverman.com

https://paulbraverman.com
https://www.instagram.com/paul.braverman

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