Elaine Mayes: Summer of Love coincides with the 50th anniversary of the summer of love; a period of great social, cultural, and political change that brought together over 100,000 like-minded young people to San Francisco to usher in a new era.
The exhibition will feature Mayes’ intimate vintage black and white portraits of youth counterculture in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district during the late 1960’s. The photographs are compelling depictions that are at once specific to the individuals pictured, as well as definers of that age and era. They reveal a freedom of expression and camaraderie that was shared by a generation at odds with its current social ideals. Together with these images will be informal portraits of musicians and festivalgoers.
Mayes photographs from this series will also be on exhibit at the De Young Museum through August 20th, as part of their Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll.
Running concurrently with Summer of Love will be a group show featuring photographs from gallery artists.
Elaine Mayes is currently a Professor Emerita in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Her photographs have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, de Young Museum and the Smithsonian Art Museum, among others.
She was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Mayes’ photographs are held within numerous museums collections, including: the J. Paul Getty Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, Center for Creative Photography, and the George Eastman Museum.
Elaine Mayes
Summer of Love
June 10 – August 26, 2017
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037
Tel (858) 456-5620
josephbellows.com