24 June - 30 June 2024
Public trail along cliffs at Lincoln Park public golf course. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 20 August 2019
Photography
Quill: Photo unrealism: Doctoring pics is becoming easier…and harder to detect | by Rod Hicks
Washington Post: A peek inside San Francisco’s AI boom - These photos offer an intimate look at the community powering the artificial- intelligence revolution. | by Laura Morton
The Guardian: ‘We’ve become unhappier’: 12 leading photographers on the images that sum up the Tories’ time in power | by Dafydd Jones
Aesthetica: My America
NY Times: A.I. Is Getting Better Fast. Can You Tell What’s Real Now? | by Stuart A. Thompson
Nadav Kander: Works in Series
Monovisions: Alfred Ehrhardt & Rolf Tietgens: The Port of Hamburg and the Northern Coast of Germany
Monroe Gallery: Tony Vaccaro: The Pursuit of Beauty
Mírame y sé color: Jacob Riis
Artsy: 10 Iconic Photographers Who Immortalized the City Streets | by Alina Cohen
PhMuseum: The Studio is a ongoing personal series started in 2020 by Tara Laure Claire.
Andrew Borowiec: American Industry 2009-present
Francesco Anselmi: Borderlands
Designboom: Owen Davies Captures Utopian Yet Surreal Monuments
The Bitter Southerner: Photographer Paul Kwilecki spent four decades documenting a single southwest Georgia county, a place he called home and where he never truly fit in. | Words by Wendell Brock | Photos by Paul Kwilecki
The Guardian: ‘Some people refused to leave their flats’: Britain through the Thatcher years | photos Mike Abrahams
The New Yorker Photo Booth: A Japanese Photographer Traces How Cities Are Built and Destroyed | by Dan Piepenbring photography by Naoya Hatakeyama
Eric Lusito: Traces of the Soviet Empire
Lensculture: Announcing 44 Critics’ Choice Award Winners for 2024
Spencer Museum of Art: Dissent, Discontent, and Action: Pictures of US by Accra Shepp
Culture, Art and Design
SF Chronicle: The day Willie Mays drove me and my best friend home in his pink Thunderbird | by Thomas O’Toole
The Guardian: All of a flutter: how eyelashes became beauty’s biggest business | by Eva Wiseman
LA Times: How Lego went from humble toy to black market item fueling crime spree | by Daniel Miller and Summer Lin
Dezeen: Is it time for architecture studios to walk away from Neom? | by Tom Ravenscroft
Dezeen: Neom being "built on the blood of Saudis" says ALQST's Lina Alhathloul | by Tom Ravenscroft
ArtForum: Between Two Worlds: The Art of Luigi Ghirri | by Maria Antonella Pelizzari
Aperture: A Painter Reconsiders the Photographs of Luigi Ghirri | by Michael Famighetti
BJP: “I think some of the greatest photojournalism contains information that we were never meant to see” - Michelle and Sid Monroe of Monroe Gallery in conversation
McSweeney’s: Introducing Our New Whole-Body Deodorant Because You Are Gross and Disgusting | by Joanna Borns
Huck: India’s bodybuilding boom reflects a nation flexing its muscles | text by Alex King - Photography by Mark Leaver
Designboom: inxect island repurposes oil rig for plastic-filtering ecosystem powered by mealworms
NY Times: Why Do We Love ‘The Bear’ So Much? | by Tejal Rao
Huck: Inside the wild world of novelty political candidates (Britain) | Text by Kyle MacNeill - Illustrations by Han Nightingale
Orion: Nice Monsters - A look at kindness as monstrosity in 'Parasite' and 'La Cérémonie’ | by Meek Fuji
BJP: Vuyo Mabheka plays with illustration, cut-outs and collage to depict the motion and difficulty of life in the zones | by Tanlume Enyatseng
Books
Photo-eye: You Don’t Look Native to Me - Photographs by Maria Sturm | reviewed by George Slade
Podcast
People Fixing The World: Making tourism work for everyone
The Forum (BBC Sounds): Music on the move - A short history of portable audio devices
Letters from an American: June 27, 2024 | by Heather Cox Richardson
Headbanging Headlines
Washington Post: Trump trusted more than Biden on democracy among key swing-state voters
Other Stuff
Shadow, Palace of Legion of Honor. San Francisco, California Photo Robert Gumpert 27 May 2024
NY Times: What the Arrival of A.I. Phones and Computers Means for Our Data | by Brian X. Chen
The Guardian: Exclusive: Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape US discourse around Gaza war | by Lee Fang and Jack Poulson
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Trump has taught America’s elites they can get away with literally anything | by Will Bunch
El País: The science of dance: At the nightclub, we synchronize like a flock of starlings | by Enrique Alpañés
TPM: Jan. 6 Prisoners Recorded A Podcast From Jail With A Camera Someone ‘Accidentally’ Gave Them | by Hunter Walker
New Scientist: Smiling robot face is made from living human skin cells | by James Woodford
NY Times: When the Terms of Service Change to Make Way for A.I. Training | by Eli Tan
Forbes: AI Power Consumption: Rapidly Becoming Mission-Critical | by Beth King
CNBC: AI could drive a natural gas boom as power companies face surging electricity demand | by Spencer Kimball
Reuters: US energy data agency to track crypto mining power use - bitcoin globally consumes a yearly 127 terawatt-hours (TWh), which is more than used by the entire country of Norway. | by Laila Kearney
The Hollywood Reporter: Paramount Cuts Nearly All Content on Comedy Central, TV Land, CMT and MTV Websites | by Rick Porter
Social Issues
Stencil on sidewalk, Sutter Street near Divisadero Street. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 21 June 2024
The Guardian: California school board president who led conservative culture war loses recall vote | by Michael Sainato
LA Times: Here’s state of abortion rights in U.S. two years after Roe overturned | by Geoff Mulvihill
ProPublica: Climate Change Is Already Forcing People From Their Homes | by Abrahm Lustgarten
The Guardian: ‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: how Britain’s libraries provide much more than books | by Aida Edemariam
Searchlight New Mexico: Buried secrets, poisoned bodies | by Alicia Inez Guzmán
LA Times: Pomona is latest California city to try a guaranteed income program | by Rebecca Plevin
Searchlight New Mexico: In drought-plagued New Mexico, a city loses nearly half its water to leaky pipes | by Michael Benanav
TPM: How To Process Biden’s Debate Disaster | by David Kurtz
Labor
Clothing worker. Downtown, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 2001
The Guardian: ‘An incredible loss for Palestine’: Israeli offensive takes deadly toll on journalists | by David Pegg, Hoda Osman and Manisha Ganguly
Hollywood Reporter: IATSE Reaches Tentative Agreement on Basic Agreement With Studios and Streamers | by Katie Kilkenny
LA Times: ‘Who’s going to live here?’ What happens when an e-commerce warehouse takes out your neighborhood | by Rebecca Plevin - Staff Writer - Photography by Robert Gauthier
Division Street
Amelia Mustain, 34 and Patrick Riley, 42. They have been together for about 5 years living in an RV currently parked on Selby Street near Evans. Photo and interview: Robert Gumpert 16 June 2024
Amelia and Patrick’s Story
(Amelia) “We are on Evans and Selby in the Bayview. We moved here because Patrick had already known that this was a spot that was open to be moved onto. The railroad tracks still go through it, and because of that it’s not owned by the City. So, we’re able to live there without the City having any ordnance over us and being able to tell us to leave. The DPW comes by to do cleanup. [Occasionally] the single DPW worker that has an attitude drives by and stares at everything and shakes his head, but there’s nothing they can do about.
We have Waymos (self driving car). They’re irritating too, constantly driving around. It’s weird seeing them without any drivers, it’s just strange. They tend to stop wherever, and they tend to stop here. It seems they stop around a lot of encampments or RVs, basically where people who are “homeless” are living. (Patrick) Like they’re charting it, or mapping it, or something. I don’t know but wherever you see an encampment at, you tend to see Waymos pullover on the side of the road. Driverless and driver.
Have things with the City gotten better? (Amelia) It’s gotten better just because they know they can’t remove us, they can’t make us move from this spot. (Patrick) I wouldn’t say they can’t make us move because they can always pull some underhanded stuff. But as far as the law goes, they really have no say over us being here because this here is state property - two different entities, the railroad and Caltrans
Will you take housing if offered: (Patrick) I will take housing. But I won’t take a shelter, a shelter don’t work for me. I got a lot of past trauma, and a lot of issues around staying in that type of environment. I’d rather be out here on the streets than be in that type of environment. They have converted hotels where they provide temporary housing for homeless but … (Amelia) You can’t have more than one dog, even if they allow dogs at all, and he has two and I have one. You can’t bring more than one medium bag with you. You cannot have visitors. You have a curfew of 10 pm. You can’t bring food in. They (staff) go in whenever they want. There are these stipulations that go along with it that don’t … (Patrick) And the minute you violate one of them, they kick you right back out to the streets. So now you right back to where you left but now you’re starting over with nothing, except with the bag that you went there with. (Amelia) The way they’re doing it now with the temporary housing I can’t go see him. I can’t go to his room. He can’t come to my room. We can’t sleep in the same bed together. That doesn’t work.
If we had a SRO, you know you only have so many “overnights”. You have to sign-in and sign-out, but you can still have people there, that’s the point. You’re not just stuck in there at a curfew date. You can come and go whenever you want with an SRO. It’s more the freedom that you’re used to having. You can’t just take somebody that’s used to doing whatever they want, whenever they want, and put them into a confined (space with) all these rules.
Are there rules on the street? (Patrick) Yeah. Spoken and unspoken. There is rules wherever you go, some more extreme than others. I have no problem dealing with rules when there in the proper perspective. Out here the rules are more consistent. Everybody’s on the same page because if not, you know, it’s costly. The rules we abide by out here determines whether you live or die. You don’t steal. You don’t hurt animals. You don’t put your hands on your women ‘cause there consequences. There are consequences everywhere too, but the consequences that we abide by are totally different. The rules are consistent. It’s not a constant change. There’s no amendment to our rules.
(Amelia) With the Hot Team and stuff, if you don’t know those people, if you’re not in with them, if you haven’t known them for a long time, you’re not going to get housing. But if they know you, they do the work and put the paperwork through and you’ll get a one bedroom tomorrow, keys in hand, no problem.
On housing: (Amelia) (In the SRO) if someone has a problem with you and they want to make your life hard, they can make your life hard and get you kicked out and you’re screwed. You don’t have any appeals. There’s no way you can say, “I was wrongfully done”. Even if you try and do that there’s so much paperwork and so much stuff you have to go through, you’re not going to do it because it’s hard enough to keep up paperwork when you’re homeless, as it is.
(Patrick) So here it is, This is my look at what’s going on with homeless housing. People that’s homeless are homeless for various and different reasons. Some of them have issues around keeping appointments, you know, keeping up with time. Some of them have mental issues where they’re not even here. Some people just have a problem with other people, period. Some like living outside. So they got all of these programs that they done started up to where they are supposed to help the homeless to adjust to these various, different issues that they’re having but it’s not happening like that. They’re not addressing the issues, they’re just looking to say they got a person off the street, and that’s that. They not dealing with the issues. Like me personally, I got a problem with remembering appointments and stuff. Honestly, that’s just the way it is. If you tell me I have an appointment two weeks from now and I’m not reminded of it, or it’s not in my face, I’ll forget about it. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is..
As far as abiding by rules and doing what we should do, if I could live by the rules out here, I most definitely can live by the rules in society. I’ve done that. I’m capable. But when the rules is constantly changing, people not sticking to the rules, and people not being held accountable for not sticking to the rules, it affects everyone differently. I’m done with it. I’m over this.
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LA Times: For the first time since 2018, homeless count finds fewer people living on L.A. streets | by Doug Smith and David Zahniser
ProPublica: U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Will Allow More Aggressive Homeless Encampment Removals | by Nicole Santa Cruz
The Guardian: Sara Rankin, a law professor cited in Sotomayor’s dissent ‘Terrifying and dystopian’: the dark realities of the supreme court’s homelessness decision | interview by Sam Levin
“Division Street” – Order from Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada