The CJM Blog

This profile is an interview with a San Francisco photographer, inspired by the exhibition The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936–1951 and the #SFphotohunt Instagram contest. This interview is with Kseniya Tuchinskaya , who won the #CityRitual challenge .   Kseniya Tuchinskaya's winning submission to the #CityRitual challenge of #SFphotohunt. Do you have a favorite place to photograph? Where is it and why? I don’t have one favorite place to take photos, or rather, I most love taking photos when I travel — it’s part of the way I experience the new place I’m in. Locally, I love to go to Briones Regional Park in the morning before the fog burns off — the landscape looks surreal and beautiful. I also love any old buildings, the rustier and peely-painted the better.

This profile is an interview with a San Francisco photographer, inspired by the exhibition The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936–1951 and the #SFphotohunt Instagram contest. This interview is with street photographer Troy Holden . An image from Troy's Instagram account. Do you have a favorite place to photograph? Where is it and why?  The city of San Francisco will always be my favorite place to photograph. I'm most interested in the downtown area because it has the highest concentration of foot traffic and architecturally dense backdrops. I frequently take walks along Mid-Market Street between 10th and 3rd street, alternating sides of the street depending on the time of day.

This profile is an interview with a San Francisco photographer, inspired by the exhibition The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936–1951 and the #SFphotohunt Instagram contest. This interview is with #SFphotohunt contest winner Rita Harowitz. Winner photograph of the "Kisser" challenge of #SFphotohunt.  Do you have a favorite place to photograph? Where is it and why? My favorite place to photograph is in my Mission neighborhood in San Francisco. The people are amazingly diverse, always interesting, and the streets are lined with murals which make for colorful backdrops. I've never felt as much of a connection to a place as I do in my present neighborhood. I photograph what I feel connected to and I feel a strong bond with the people and places of the Mission.

Portrait of Brian Scott by Heimo  ( heimophotography.com ) Brian Scott is the Creative Director of Boon Design , has worked with the likes of Apple and Miranda July, and is the designer of our exhibition catalog Do Not Destroy: Trees, Art, and Jewish Thought. It's a stunning book that looks different from any other we've produced. This made us wonder: who is he, and how did he approach the challenge of creating a book about trees, where the subject matter is not just contained in the words, but in the paper itself? How was this book different from others you've worked on? The main reason this book was different from others was the schedule—from design to finished books was incredibly condensed. Most book projects take many months and often years, and this is after the content is created and edited. Thankfully the curators (Dara Solomon and Colleen Stockmann) did a wonderful job of organizing the content, and we were also blessed with an incre...

Just before launching into the world premiere of her gorgeous new song “The Arrow and the Bow,” commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in connection with its exhibition Jacques Lipchitz : Hagar in the Desert , musician Alicia Jo Rabins invoked the young inter-disciplinary muse Miranda July: “Limitations are where art begins.”

There are moments when art and religion come together perfectly. This happened to me recently, after returning from the wonderful Picasso show at the de Young Museum, all tanked up on the cubist view of the world. Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso , Paris foregrounds the autobiographical dimension of his work, which is appropriate since Picasso held onto this collection until he died, expressing as it did something essential about his vision of the world. Curator Timothy Bugard in the audio guide, describes Picasso’s understanding of art as a kind of magic, with the artist—through the hocus pocus of oil, pencil or metal—creating life out of inert objects.

Gertrude Stein with Virgil Thomson. A rare moment of not gossiping. Gertrude Stein was creative not only in her writing but also in establishing and defining her relationships. Her social circle was forever fluctuating; associations changing often with the exception of her life-time partner, Alice B. Toklas . The women enjoyed the company of artists, literati and their wives at their Saturday night salons. Wanting to establish the couple at the heart of the art movement, Gertrude transforms their relationship into a mythical status when she writes as Alice, “[N]ow I will tell you how two Americans happened to be in the heart of an art movement of which the outside world knew nothing about” (Stein 26). While their presence and contributions cannot be questioned, one can question their sensitivity. Gertrude told Ernest Hemingway that he must quit journalism to become a proper writer. This sounds a little callous coming from a woman with a trust fund. However, not having to work a...