Deutsch
English
On the American photographer, Janet DELANEY (b. 1952, in Compton, CA)
Janet DELANEY is an American photographer and educator based in Berkeley, California. In 1975, she received a BFA with honors from San Francisco State University and in 1981 an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Photo books by Janet DELANEY
'South of Market' (2013); 'Public Matters' (2018); 'Red Eye to New York' (2021)
Janet DELANEY was a professor at the College of San Mateo from 1980 to 1991. She was a guest professor at Santa Clara University during 1986, 1989, and 1995. She taught at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991, 1994, 1997, 2014, and 2015. From 1998 to 2015, she was an Adjunct Professor in the Visual Studies department at the University of California, Berkeley.
On the work by Janet DELANEY
Janet DELANEY is best known for her series, 'South of Market', which she began in 1978 when she moved to the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, an area undergoing transition due to gentrification and urban renewal. Using a large format camera and color film, she photographed her neighbors in their places of work, businesses, apartments, and out on the street. She also conducted oral interviews with many of her subjects and produced 35 mm slides, which she showed alongside her photographs in the exhibition 'Form Follows Finance: A Survey of the South of Market' at San Francisco Camerawork (1982) and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1983). The series was published as a book in 2013 and shown at the 'De Young Museum', San Francisco from January to July, 2015. She returned to the South of Market area to photograph the radical changes that had occurred in the decades since she first lived there, several examples of which were published in the catalogue that accompanied the show at the de Young.
Following her original work on South of Market, Janet DELANEY began her series titled 'Public Matters' (in 1982). Public Matters centers primarily around the Latino community and Mission District during the 1980s, a rather tumultuous political period. Once again using a large format camera and color film, she took to the streets with San Francisco natives to capture them during community gatherings, like the annual Cinco de Mayo parade, during political rallies, like the Peace, Jobs, and Justice marches, or simply while lounging in front of their homes and businesses. 'Public Matters' captures the spirit of San Francisco during a period of high immigration and political strife, documenting the resilience and energy of the city's communities. The series was published in 2018 as a photo volume. That year, she featured the work in a solo exhibit at the 'Euqinom Gallery' in San Francisco, from November to December.
Awards
In 1979, 1982 and 1986 she received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 2020 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.