Self-Portrait, San Francisco Financial District
Michael Jang
American, born 1951
1973
A 1973 gelatin silver print self-portrait in which Michael Jang places himself amid a cluster of strangers on a San Francisco sidewalk to capture the everyday tensions and small dramas of urban life.
The photograph hits like a moment pulled from a movie—faces pressed close to the lens (Jang in sunglasses and suit prominent), an older woman in a veil, a young man and a blonde woman framed against tall bank buildings and a street sign reading “California,” creating a compressed, layered foreground against looming architecture.
By merging self-portraiture with street documentary, this work typifies a 1970s shift toward intimate, observational photography that blurs private identity and public spectacle and broadened how photographers explored social portraiture.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
11 × 14" (27.9 × 35.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Vital Projects Fund, Robert B. Menschel
Accession
416.2021
Palette
Exhibitions
