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Exhibition

Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography

November 23, 2024–July 2025
Floor 3
Tickets
Entry to this exhibition is included with general admission.

Conversations at a party in Oakland in 1932 changed the history of photography. At that gathering, several now-iconic Bay Area figures — including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston — banded together to form Group f.64, a collective dedicated to “true” photography and the rejection of the prevailing style of Pictorialism, which mimicked painting. The group’s name was technical, referring to the camera lens setting that permits the greatest depth of field, but their mission was creative: to make photographs of startling clarity and beauty that rivaled art made in other mediums. Although Group f.64 lasted for less than a year, its legacy endured, marking the Bay Area as an epicenter for modernist photography.

Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography takes the work of this influential collective as a nexus from which to explore various histories of photography in the Bay Area from the 1910s to the present.

The first three galleries of this exhibition will be on view November 23, 2024. The full exhibition will be on view January 16, 2025.

Exhibition Preview

Imogen Cunningham, Junk, 1933; collection SFMOMA, The Henry Swift Collection, gift of Florence Alston Swift; © The Imogen Cunningham Trust; photo: Don Ross
Edward Weston, Two Shells, 1927; collection SFMOMA, Albert M. Bender Collection, bequest of Albert M. Bender to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Don Ross 
Hiromu Kira, The Thinker, 1930; Black Dog Collection; © Sadamura Family Trust, photo: Tenari Tuatagaloa
Dorothea Lange, White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933; collection SFMOMA; The Henry Swift Collection, gift of Florence Alston Swift; © Oakland Museum of California, the City of Oakland, gift of Paul S. Taylor; photo: Don Ross
Ansel Adams, The Golden Gate Before the Bridge, San Francisco, California, ca. 1932; printed ca. 1972; collection SFMOMA, gift of Alfred Fromm, Otto Meyer, and Louis Petri, San Francisco; © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust; photo: Don Ross
David S. Johnson, Portrait of Johnny in Front of Ansel Adams's House, 1945; collection SFMOMA, gift of the artist; © David Johnson; photo: Don Ross

Header image: Hiromu Kira, The Thinker, 1930; Black Dog Collection; © Sadamura Family Trust, photo: Tenari Tuatagaloa