Coming back soon.

The Flagmakers mural between Howard and Natoma Streets in San Francisco has been lost to sight as MOMA has undergone an extensive rebuild. The museum will finally open in May 2016 and let’s hope they make far better use of the internal volume than before where most of the display space was simply wasted, making for too few exhibitions.

When scaffolding went up all around I rather feared that Flagmakers would be lost to the world and my extensive collection of mural images – so many of them ephemeral and now gone – shows I photographed it in 2011 and 2012.

Here’s the 2012 version:

February 18, 2012. Nikon D700, 85mm f/1.8 AF-D Nikkor.

MOMA has an interesting story about photographer Janet Delaney who snapped the same scene in 1982 – seemingly as faded then as now.

Click the image for the story.

Click the image for the story. The good news is that the mural has been saved, if rather crowded out by the building additions.

Comparing the two, not that much has actually changed in the mural building. The fire escape ladder appears to have grown a counterweight to the right, the delicate iron balcony appears unmolested, the top of the fire escape now has handrails added and the sign was as faded then as now – I did add a little saturation here and there to the surpassingly bland original. The garage in the foreground is long gone, unlike Chevron, which should be around another century or so as we reluctantly migrate to renewable resources.

I’m reminded also of how much I miss the Nikon D700 body – no video nonsense, a modest sized sensor with superior low light capabilities and exceptional responsiveness. A photographer’s machine. No one needs more than 12mp in an FF sensor.

Another version of Flagmakers, no longer possible, appears here.