Photographer Christopher Hall Reveals Vintage San Francisco In Found Street Scenes

Sacramento CA

02 June, 2021

5:18 PM

Description

By Mike McPhate, California Sun June 2, 2021 Christopher Hall's photos of parked cars around San Francisco seem drawn from some dreamy bygone era. But the scenes — a moody 1960s Ford Mustang parked outside a warehouse, a Rolls Royce in front of "Don Ramon's" Mexican restaurant — were captured squarely in the age of Twitter and Facebook. They are not staged. Hall, 60, who works in mental health care by day, heads out early mornings with a medium format film camera in search of vintage cars on the street. Sometimes, he said, he gets lucky, stumbling upon a perfect arrangement of color, texture, and nostalgia. Often though, a Tesla or Amazon delivery truck intrudes on the picture, forcing him to come back until it's lined up the way he wants it. "Ideally," Hall said, "I'm trying to find a scene where you have to question, 'Is this 1958 or is this 2021?'" The resulting body of work captures a sort of echo from San Francisco's past, faded by time but still embedded in the landscape. Below, see a selection of Hall's images, and many more in his "Streets of San Francisco" Flickr album. Christopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher HallChristopher Hall The California Sun is a daily newsletter on the most interesting news from across California by former New York Times writer Mike McPhate. Sign up for free.