The Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy
The Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy
by Dana Smith
San Francisco : Dana Smith, 2009
3 v. : all col. ill. ; 32 x 42 cm
N7433.4 .S553 M57 2009B
Dana Smith is a longtime resident of the Mission District of San Francisco, one of a number of exhibiting artists (loosely referred to as the Mission School) whose aesthetic and working methods are fundamentally informed by the socially, culturally, and economically diverse neighborhood. She works primarily in the photographic medium, distorting her images—often of the Mission itself—through collage or digital manipulation and then collecting the resulting compositions into portfolio or book form. To date her most compelling works have been, arguably, collaborative ones, her images and page layouts serving as hyper-real backdrops for work by partner Mission artists.
The Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy, however, is a solo effort in which Smith’s digitally enhanced photography takes center stage, and as such (in conjunction with her poetry volume Sanctuary in My Skin from 2008) it seems a turning point in the artist’s career. The thirty-two-inch page spreads are printed full-bleed with saturated images of sidewalks, bus transfers, crushed pills, street vendors, tattoos, transients, and schoolchildren. The effect is dramatic, each page turn evoking the atmosphere of the street and the feeling of progressing down it. Across three volumes, the project approaches the monumental.
by Dana Smith
San Francisco : Dana Smith, 2009
3 v. : all col. ill. ; 32 x 42 cm
N7433.4 .S553 M57 2009B
Dana Smith is a longtime resident of the Mission District of San Francisco, one of a number of exhibiting artists (loosely referred to as the Mission School) whose aesthetic and working methods are fundamentally informed by the socially, culturally, and economically diverse neighborhood. She works primarily in the photographic medium, distorting her images—often of the Mission itself—through collage or digital manipulation and then collecting the resulting compositions into portfolio or book form. To date her most compelling works have been, arguably, collaborative ones, her images and page layouts serving as hyper-real backdrops for work by partner Mission artists.
The Mission Miracle Mile Trilogy, however, is a solo effort in which Smith’s digitally enhanced photography takes center stage, and as such (in conjunction with her poetry volume Sanctuary in My Skin from 2008) it seems a turning point in the artist’s career. The thirty-two-inch page spreads are printed full-bleed with saturated images of sidewalks, bus transfers, crushed pills, street vendors, tattoos, transients, and schoolchildren. The effect is dramatic, each page turn evoking the atmosphere of the street and the feeling of progressing down it. Across three volumes, the project approaches the monumental.
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