Self Portrait, San Francisco Financial District

San Francisco-based photographer Michael Jang has been pushing the limits of photography since the 1970s. Using a snapshot style, he was influenced by the spontaneity of street photographers. He captured diverse scenes ranging from celebrity parties in Beverly Hills to gangs and his Chinese American family. These pictures from his early series ended up in a cardboard box at home as Jang focused primarily on commercial and portrait work “to make a living” in his early career. In the 2000s, he got a chance to revisit his artistic practice and has been exhibited widely since.

In this rare self-portrait on view here, Jang appears in a black suit and shades on a corner in San Francisco’s Financial District in 1973. This selfie-style image was taken with a Leica camera and a 21mm wide-angle lens. The appearance of a security guard in the background gives an uncanny feeling, creating a fiction-like visual narrative that is open to interpretation. This 2019 version, spray painted in red, is a collaboration with Barry McGee, a graffiti artist and a pioneer of San Francisco’s Mission School art movement. Looking back at this vintage photograph forty-six years later, McGee is checking on his friend and asking “are you ok?”—a question that turned into a prophecy later amid the pandemic. The result is a new work, a work of time-based media.