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Bannerfile photo
San Francisco photographer Ken Miller casts his eye upon the
disenfranchised. |
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Miller's photos expose America's
underbelly
Lee
Elliot
BANNER STAFF
Faces. Some disturbing, many detached or lonely, an absent look in one, another engaged and brimming, yet others whimsy, a slight luster of hope in the backdrop of looming despair. Each one of these piercing images represents a photographic argot of sub-cultures and micro-communities rarely visited and seldom seen.
These are the faces from San Francisco photographer Ken Miller's exhibit 'Take Me to the Tenderloin Now' which opens Friday at the East End Gallery, 349 Commercial Street.
'My work is concerned with the worlds of America's underclass,' Miller says. World renowned photographer Jock Sturges, speaking from his summer retreat in Montalivet, France, adds that although Miller is long from being the first photographer to ever work with the disenfranchised edges of civilization, 'The scale and persistence of his effort make him one of the clearest voices to emerge in this genre in our medium's short history.' New York Magazine said that Miller's photographs 'suggest a country of improvised families &emdash; address unknown an acquaintance with the night that's closer to Genet's than to Frost.'
Miller, now 39, has spent the past 14 years photographing San Francisco's street alcoholics, addicts, electroshock patients, prostitutes and skinheads, along with an emerging social class of immigrants and refugees. 'I try to appreciate and capture those things others often see as inconsequential or trivial, but are of great importance in the lives of those I photograph: like a whore's pride in her make-up or a child's singular delight with his lizard,' he says. He admits to it being a grueling task, an almost daily obsession, gaining access and acceptance to these dark places, and crafting both personal and photographic relationships over time through continual interaction.
Originally from Worcester, Miller started taking pictures at age eight with a Kodak Instamatic camera his father gave him. He became fiscally industrious, mowing lawns to earn enough to buy his first two and a quarter camera at 14. By 16 he had purchased his first 5' x 7' view camera, the same type of camera he uses today.
The most influential relationship in Miller's life has been Jock Sturges. He first met Sturges as a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute, where Miller received in 1986 his BFA (in photography), having transferred from UMass, Amherst. However, it was Sturges' mentoring and friendship that was so beneficial, often providing Miller with a place to crash and wash up when he was living in his car. Sturges also lent Miller cameras, lenses, film, a darkroom, and just about anything else that would encourage his enormous talent.
'But what I liked best,' remembers Sturges, 'about what he does is that none of it ever seemed to be the result of any conscious thinking. Ken's work happened/happens to him &emdash; an accident on the scale of being struck by a meteorite. '
The images on display from his book come primarily from the Golden Gate part of San Francisco know locally as the Haight/Ashbury district. One image, 'Miss J and Mis Gittings,' two raging transvestites, has accompanying text which reads: 'I like comfort...I'm not that concerned with looking like a woman. Oh, where's my black bra?'
As Miller photographed people on the street he became something of a pied-photographer, finding it difficult at times with the assembled crowd. 'Marisa,' a frontal nude of a model Miller has photographed frequently over the years, shows off her new Bronson dragon tattoo. 'Lee Aerian Woman,' posing as Marilyn Monroe, is another favorite model who, Miller explained, 'had no connection with the neo-Nazi skinheads, but sought a spiritual connection with Aerian, what she thought was an ancient tribe in India where all was utopia.'
Recognition for Miller's work has not come easily. 'His images have been seen as ugly and offensive by many,' argues Vollmann. Miller's career has suffered because of his severe subject matter, so he augments his income plastering walls and doing weddings.
His latest project documents children, most Cambodian, Vietnamese and Filipino refugees, living in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, a 10-square-block multicultural community of immigrants and refugees mostly from Southeast Asia surviving amidst crack cocaine, gang activity and crowded living conditions. When choreographer Pearl Ubungen, Miller's girlfriend and mother of his two-year-old son, Salvatore, received a grant to begin the Tenderloin Dance Project, Miller was given the opportunity to photograph the rehearsals and performances. He soon became fascinated with his subjects lives, and plans to expand the project photographing other children and older teens in their homes and throughout the community, collecting personal statements/stories that will eventually become part of a book about life in the Tenderloin district.
Miller feels at ease with his 5' x 7' view camera particularly because its easier to make reproductions. 'The images it makes are like those of the old school,' he reflects, 'letting the subjects direct the pose.'
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Jul 24th, 1997