Rarely seen pictures from veteran San Francisco photographer Gerald Ratto’s 1952 series on San Francisco’s Fillmore District, documenting the then thriving center of Black culture and jazz.

DATES: November 5, 2009 – January 30, 2010 HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 5:30 and by appointment; also open the first Thursday of the month until 7:30 PM

SPECIAL EVENT: Saturday, November 14, 2 – 5 PM - Reception and gallery talk with the artist

Robert Tat Gallery presents selections from veteran San Francisco photographer Gerald Ratto’s 1952 series on San Francisco’s Fillmore District. When Ratto took up his Rolleiflex camera and began documenting the Fillmore, the neighborhood was a thriving center of Black culture and home to many famous jazz and music clubs.

Ratto’s Fillmore series captures a unique time and place in the history of San Francisco. “The area was rich in color and I spent many days there wandering around and getting to know people,” recalls Ratto. “The people were wonderful and didn’t have attitudes. The area was not dangerous, and it was not gentrified. It was real. People believed me when I said my only motive was to take pictures. That’s why the pictures are so good. People were just themselves, and we were having a good time together.”

The photographs included in the Gallery exhibition are modern digital pigment prints made from the original 1952 negatives. The digital edition is well priced, making the photographs ideal for holiday giving. Gelatin silver prints of selected images will also be available.

According to Gallery director, Robert Tat, the Children of the Fillmore series is significant in several ways. “The faces of the children are of course the main attraction. As captured by Gerald’s camera, they are innocent, passionate, playful, and altogether genuine. I particularly love the photos that show children of different races playing together. This is so uniquely San Francisco in the early 1950s.”

When Gerald Ratto made the Children of the Fillmore series he was studying at the California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute). In the photography program, founded by Ansel Adams in 1945, Ratto remembers learning invaluable creative and professional skills from instructors that included Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston and other important photographers from California’s golden age. Several of Ratto’s images are included in the book, “The Moment of Seeing – Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts”, a history of the program written by Deborah Klochko and Stephanie Comer.

“Some of the lessons that stand out in my mind from those years were Minor White’s emphasis on aesthetics and visualization, and the importance of the art of ‘seeing’ before doing anything else,” Gerald Ratto recalls. “Another lesson was the importance of trusting one’s own knowledge and experiences and going in your own direction.” That philosophy served him well in making the Children of the Fillmore series.

Today, Gerald Ratto continues to make his living as an architectural and fine arts photographer. He studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley before becoming a photographer. His client list includes I. M. Pei, Gensler, HOK and Skidmore, Owings + Merrill, plus many other leading architects. His photographs have appeared in all the major architectural, interior and landscape design magazines and books. While architectural photography provides his livelihood, Gerald never really thinks of photography as work. “It’s just what I do. I make pictures wherever I am.”