Bus, San Francisco

Elaine Mayes

1970 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Mayes is recognized for her photographs from the late 1960s of the Monterey Pop Festival, a milestone for that era’s counterculture and a highlight of the "Summer of Love." She also produced portraits of the young people that flocked to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury District and explored the relationship of people to the landscape, focusing on the quintessentially American experience of viewing the world from a moving automobile. Here Mayes captured an everyday experience from an unexpected viewpoint, allowing arches of light and shadow to create an ethereal glow above the heads of commuters.

Artist

Elaine Mayes

Date

1970

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Dorothy Levitt Beskind Gift, 1973