J A N E T D E L A N E Y | SoMa Now 2011-2021
Revisiting a place I once called home creates a curious dissonance. During the 1980s I chronicled the early stages of gentrification in the South of Market district of San Francisco. Now as I revisit my old neighborhood, rechristened SoMa by millennial marketers, I see a skyline bulging with new buildings. My former neighbors are eclipsed by both high-earning technology workers and those without homes whose tents line the alleys and broad boulevards. In this new world I often feel as if I am standing in two places at once: the past infuses the present with both longing and confusion.
In SoMa Now I sew together a complex narrative of a city I know well, blending fact and feeling to convey what is lost, what is gained and what remains in this new terrain.
This project received a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship.
