By Jessica Saia
The first thing I thought when I saw “Taken Pictures,” a series of photos by San Francisco native Mike Hows was, shit, I still haven’t gotten my ‘go-bag’ together since moving to this precarious little city. The task’s been on the top of my to-do list since last October when SF had two earthquakes in six hours; and yet here it is, nearly March, and it still takes me a small eternity to get a pair of socks together before work, let alone between hypothetically frantic walls. While my survival bag’s not quite packed, Mike’s arresting photos serve as a reminder of being prepared for the next emergency, albeit a much more ominous example of “better safe than sorry.”
“Taken Pictures” documents an abandoned fallout shelter located in Richmond, CA. Shelters like this one were built in response to the threat of radiation during the Cold War, and though they thankfully never had to be used, the reality of braced anticipation blinks back at you from Hows’ stark still life images. I can hardly imagine the nagging, egg-whites-in-your-gut kind of fear that accompanies the need to completely prepare for the most basic, human survival. Though How’s point of view is plainly focused on the shelter and objects, it’s that invisible mindset saturating the space that comes forward as the prominent subject.
Hows was born in San Francisco, but spends most of his time moving around the country as a truck driver. He is a veteran and photographer, compelled to explore scenes of military history from the greater Bay Area, with a style that works perfectly for matter of fact documentation. His preferred medium was black-and-white film photography until it became too expensive to maintain (been there), but after transitioning to digital, he is refreshingly adamant about doing little to no post processing on the computer. For as simple as some of the photos appear, there is a skilled application of filters, lenses, and hand held light applied over long exposures. Taken Pictures is a collection of exclusively night photography, specializing in skillfully throwing wide-eyed light on some of the pitch black places humans have for the most part left to the rodents. Working in the dark lets Mike hang on to the intimacy of the dark room, and the contrast and steadiness in his work nod at his former medium of choice. In this series, the subject speaks for its dusty self. A dormant fist around survival, left untouched instead of meticulously preserved.
All photos by Mike Hows
