Photography

“...a marvelous book and a great contribution to Chinatown, the Chinese-American community, and to the world community. I am amazed at your photography, your appreciation of color, your mastery of framing, your adventurousness in perspectives...it all worked out beautifully.”—Ben Fong-Torres

“Impressively pairing striking imagery with an informative historical narrative, the book transports readers right into the heart of Chinatown’s thriving streets, festivals, local flavor, and cultural intensity. A vividly realized tribute to one of Northern California’s most revered cultural neighborhoods.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The unique imprints of different eras are presented as if readers travel through the corridor of time and read "of the many things from ancient to modern". Evans shoots in the context of the times. Leong introduces the history, tourism, daily life, and celebrations of the Chinatown community through clear text descriptions.”—World Journal, the nation’s #1 Chinese newspaper

“As far as I am concerned, this is the best book on Chinatown. The book was so well written and all things Chinatown were told with such clarity! And the photographs were stunning! Our neighborhood can be so much prouder of its history and heritage, thanks to you two!! I can't thank you enough for creating such an important book for our community. It will be enjoyed for years to come!!”—Betty Louie, Advisor Chinatown Merchants Association

“You have given us a synopsis of history, cultural, political, personal—it's pretty amazing. And while delivering so much content, the book yet evinces a great spirit of the place as well. I love photo books with text—it's a great combination, two modalities of perception that together make more than the sum of their styles.”—Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of Citizen Scientist

America’s oldest Chinatown comes alive in stunning photos of its people and places

Following his award-winning book on San Francisco’s Mission District, Dick Evans turns his attention to Chinatown, the fifth of a square mile that attracts more tourists than the Golden Gate Bridge but where the median household income is a quarter of the citywide average. From delicious dim sum to wok-filled shops, from iconic red lanterns to elaborate parade floats, from inside single-room occupancy apartments to outdoor games of Chinese chess in Portsmouth Square, Evans captures a place filled with diverse residents and a unique mélange of American and Chinese architecture, cuisine, and culture. Vibrant images are interspersed with sidebars highlighting particular people and institutions, deepening viewers’ immersion into this community. Kathy Chin Leong’s lucid text introduces readers to the history of the neighborhood, as well as to themes of tourism, daily life, and celebrations. At the heart of the book is a tight-knit community and a thriving neighborhood, which welcomes immigrants with supportive institutions and entices tourists to experience a wide array of Chinese traditions. Evans’s photos highlight a place undergoing visible progress but, unlike other San Francisco neighborhoods that are gentrifying, maintaining its unique character and authenticity.

Dugan Aguilar (Maidu/Northern Paiute/Achomawi), a man of few words, speaks his heart through his photography. With nature's light and a camera, he creates images of indigenous California people, photographs that embody the depth of their subjects' beauty, strength, and humor. His portraits of people, places, and ceremonies combine the intimacy of family photos with the technical skill of a masterful artist. His photographic works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and a generation of California Indian people have grown accustomed to seeing his photographs in their homes, museums, and News from Native California. Aguilar's photos defy the romanticized and melodramatic images by which Native people are often depicted. Ranging from portraits of military veterans, basket makers, and dancers to meditative landscapes, Aguilar's work documents—and contributes to—the perseverance and renewal of Native California's living, vibrant cultures.

Dick Evans captures the pulse of life in the Mission District, the San Francisco neighborhood known for its murals and Latin American culture—and more recently for its rapid gentrification. Intimate, colorful images depict a place filled with diverse residents, stately Victorian houses, hand-painted store signs, Carnaval dancers, Día de los Muertos celebrants, political activists, and its namesake, Mission Dolores (here juxtaposed against portraits of Native people and indigenous cultural objects). Poetry and quotations from Mission residents are interspersed throughout, deepening viewers' immersion into this community. But at the heart of the book is the Mission's famous public art: works that depict Latin American culture, resistance to political oppression, passion for environmental justice, and outrage at gentrification. Evans’s photos highlight the growing threat to the neighborhood’s character, but they also reveal the many changes that have shaped the neighborhood into its vivacious present-day identity.

When L. Frank and Marina Drummer went on the road in 2002, they set out to visit as many people from different California tribes as possible. Crisscrossing the state, they taped hundreds of hours of interviews and collected copies of nearly fifteen hundred family photos. The documentary project, funded by the California State Library and LEF Foundation, paints an unprecedented portrait of California’s indigenous people using their own words and photographs from their own family albums. In turns moody, beautiful, warm, and humorous, First Families is a one-of-a-kind book that combines extremely personal images with text that gives readers a broader, deeper view of Indian history and many complex living cultures.

No need to hop on a plane to the East Coast! California has beautiful fall foliage, especially in the Sierra Nevada, which glows red and golden every year with aspens, cottonwoods, dogwoods, maples, and oaks. This compact, lively guide shows visitors where and how to capture the best images of turning leaves in the eastern Sierra, Tahoe, and Yosemite, as well as destinations off the beaten track. Mitchell's advice is suitable for photographers of all levels, whether tourists who want to share their experience with friends or professionals seeking advice for dealing with the special challenges of fall photography. More than a manual of technical considerations, though, California's Fall Color encourages us to be overwhelmed by beauty—to take home an image containing the color but, just as importantly, the essence of that sublime feeling.