South of Market

1978-1986

South of Market, 1978-1986 is a photographic portrait of a San Francisco neighborhood in the throes of urban renewal.

In 1978, Janet Delaney moved to San Francisco’s South of Market district because the location was central and the rent was cheap. On the weekends she photographed with her large format camera at the nearby construction site for what is now the Moscone Convention Center. After witnessing the nighttime demolition of an adjacent residential hotel, Delaney became interested in the rippling economic effects urban renewal was having on poor and working class residents. Leaving the construction site behind, Delaney joined local efforts to protest the city’s treatment of the community and began to photograph and interview her neighbors in their homes and places of work.

South of Market is not a romantic representation of San Francisco’s past, but rather a testament to a vanished community made up of blue-collar workers, small business owners, families with children, artists, and gay men. The work is especially relevant today, as a new wave of gentrification brought on by the second internet boom is again driving less affluent residents out of San Francisco.

VIEW PORTFOLIO

Publications
2013. South of Market (MACK) with text by Erin O’Toole, Curator, SFMOMA

Support
1982. National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship
1979. National Endowment for the Arts Photography Survey Grant

Collections
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
de Young Museum, San Francisco
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Oakland Museum of Art
San Francisco Art Commission

Press + Interviews

Solo Exhibitions
2018. University of the Arts, South of Market, Philadelphia, PA
2015. deYoung Museum, Janet Delaney: South of Market, San Francisco, CA (Jan-July)
2015. Adobe Main Offices, South of Market, San Francisco, CA
2011. Google Main Offices, South of Market, San Francisco, CA
1983. Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Form Follows Finance: A Survey of the South of Market, Canada
1982. SF Camerawork, Form Follows Finance: A Survey of the South of Market, San Francisco, CA

Group Exhibitions
2023-2024. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bay Area Now 9 Triennial Exhibition, San Francisco (October-May)
2019-2020. Bundeskunsthalle, California Dreams: San Francisco - A Portrait, Bonn, Germany
2019. UC Berkeley Art Museum, Unlimited, Berkeley, CA
2018. Aperture Gallery, Refocus, New York, NY
2018. BAMFA (UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), Way Bay, Berkeley, CA
2017. Oakland Museum of California, Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing, Oakland, CA
2016. SFMOMA, About Time: Photography in a Moment of Change, San Francisco, CA
2016. California Historical Society, Photographing South of Market, Ira Nowinski and Janet Delaney, San Francisco, CA
2015. Fresno Museum, Hanna S Barsam Photography Invitational: Urban California, Fresno, CA
2013. SFMOMA, Picturing Modernity, San Francisco, CA
2010. SF Camerawork, Autobiography of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
1992. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Stories of the City, San Francisco, CA
1982. South of Market Cultural Center, Cities, An Urban Reality, San Francisco, CA
1981. 80 Langton Street, Five Alarm Neighborhood, San Francisco, CA