A teen biker pops a wheelie. A couple locks hands in an arm-wrestling match. In another photo, a child, around 10 years old, playfully presses his face up to the camera lens.
Dozens of black-and-white photos like these now line the paneled windows of Galería de La Raza’s Studio 16, at Shotwell and 16th streets, in an exhibit titled “The Window Project.”
The roughly 10-foot-tall installation owes its life to an unusual quarter: Mission District elementary school students.
Children from Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School in the Mission took all the photos on display, the result of a collaboration between the students, Galería de la Raza, and Sergio De La Torre, an artist and University of San Francisco fine arts professor, who also enlisted his students to help with the effort.
The mural, which has its opening reception this Saturday, Sept. 13, from 6 to 10 p.m., features photos overlaid with geometric shapes, splashes of color, a map of the Mission and messages like “We Keep Us Safe.” The enormous piece stretches from the 16th Street side of the building to Shotwell Street.
The kids needed little prepping. After just a single workshop led by De La Torre’s students, the young artists hit the ground running with Canon Rebel EOS cameras to document life in their neighborhood.
They photographed dozens of scenes: The backside of a woman with long hair making a purchase from a bakery, a tray full of Mexican sweet breads, a cruiser bicycle with a woven basket decorated with flowers and many more.
“We received about 250 photos from the kids,” said De La Torre. Diego Gomez, a design student in De La Torre’s Artists as Citizens class, chose a final 30 photos for the mural; the others remained with the students as keepsakes.
“I really wanted to choose the photos that represent the personality in their community, and how they interact with their neighborhood and each other,” Gomez said.
A faded Mission District map anchors the piece. Geometric and colorful shapes overlaid on top of the photos represent the neighborhood’s empty storefronts — shops that were once beauty salons, restaurants, electronic stores and more, all now shuttered.
Two Sankofa gates — iron gates commonly seen in the Mission — frame the entrance to Studio 16.
One is a gate made of the cempazuchitl flower, the marigold common in the neighborhood. The other gate has paper cut-outs of flames and is called the Gate of Fire, a nod to the history of buildings catching on fire in the Mission, De La Torre said.
Also tied into the mural: Messages on remittances, the money immigrant communities send home.
One message reads: “$38.34 billion in remittances. The substantial inflow of remittances provides crucial support for domestic consumption, investment and overall economic stability in the Philippines.”
The university students also incorporated the logos of wire-transfer companies like Western Union and Elektra into the panel, adding their own twist to substitute the logos with “know your rights” messages for dealing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Two of his students, De La Torre said, “started playing with ‘How can we change the message that you get from these places?’ Instead of sending money, ‘Why don’t we tell people about their rights?’”
The students replaced the names of the companies with messages on rights you have when facing ICE.
One says, “You have the right to not sign.” Another reads, “You have the right to not answer an immigrant agent’s questions.”
The signs — in different languages, including Spanish and Vietnamese — hang in small rectangular windows located above the primary panels.
The vulnerability of the Mission’s immigrant community was top of mind when designing the mural. Before the class settled on the final concept, they brainstormed other ideas, like using the faces of street vendors in the Mission. But the university students considered ICE and nixed the idea.
“It was very sensitive, because of what was going on around that time in January,” said De La Torre. “ICE raids were coming to the city.”
Gomez said, “We thought, ‘Let’s not put anyone’s faces on the final mural or represent the vendor,” because we want it to be a piece that stands for the community and that doesn’t work against it.’”
So they handed over the cameras to kids instead. Perhaps predictably, the youth spent a lot of time photographing their own faces.
“A lot of the photos taken by the kids were just of each other,” said Gomez. They seemed to have great fun doing so, he added — even if many of them were out of focus. ”The photos speak to what represents the Mission for the people who live here.”
The Window Project is up until May 31, and has its opening community celebration this Saturday from 6 to 10 p.m. at La Galería de La Raza, 2480 16th St., San Francisco, CA 94110.
If you’d like to know what Mission District kids see, you don’t need any fancy nonprofit photo program.
We’ve set up an instagram, @missioncarnival, that details street and sidewalk conditions around Marshall Elementary School.
Jackie and the nonprofit cabal would rather psychologically traumatize kids and working class Mission residents than inconvenience the out of town junkies who have taken over the neighborhood. Sad but true.
“Jackie and the nonprofit cabal” – that predated her, you fail to admit, because you’re not an honest narrator…