Nostalgic photos of everyday life in ’70s San Francisco

Grow­ing up in LA’s fabled San Fer­nan­do Val­ley dur­ing the ​’50s and ​’60s, Bar­bara Ramos devel­oped ​“the habit of ​‘look­ing’ all the time”. She took up pho­tog­ra­phy long before it was con­sid­ered a viable career path, let alone a fine art, leav­ing home in 1969 at age 19 to study at the San Fran­cis­co Art Institute. 

“I always knew that I was an artist and was obsessed by the act of pho­tograph­ing my envi­ron­ment,” says Ramos, whose first apart­ment was on Sut­ter Street, near Polk in Low­er Nob Hill, a flour­ish­ing gay hub at the time. As the Sum­mer of Love gave way to Gay Lib­er­a­tion, San Fran­cis­co stood as a bea­con on the hill, draw­ing baby boomers seek­ing com­mu­ni­ty, free­dom, and self-expression. 

But Ramos noticed a dis­tinc­tive schism in the fab­ric of city life, the native San Fran­cis­cans a more con­ser­v­a­tive lot who saw their home­town increas­ing­ly become a play­ground for rad­i­cal youth. The implic­it ten­sions between the old and new guard formed the foun­da­tion of her work as Ramos tra­versed the streets of San Fran­cis­co between 1969 and 1973. 

Read next: Mem­o­ries of San Francisco’s 1990s rad­i­cal les­bian scene

After the pho­tographs were made, Ramos’s inti­mate por­traits of carnies with whips, Hare Krish­nas mid chant, well-heeled locals, and queer love all but dis­ap­peared – until 2020, when she and her hus­band Joe decid­ed to digi­tise the archive. Look­ing at the pho­tographs again for the first time in 50 years, Ramos remem­bers feel­ing like she had dis­cov­ered a long lost love. ​“I felt like I was final­ly home,” she says. ​“Pho­tog­ra­phy was what I should have been doing all along.” 

And now, at 75, she final­ly is. After her first solo exhi­bi­tion at the Sanchez Art Cen­ter in Paci­fi­ca in 2023, Ramos returns with her debut mono­graph A Fear­less Eye: The Pho­tog­ra­phy of Bar­bara Ramos – San Fran­cis­co and Cal­i­for­nia, 1969 – 1973 (Chron­i­cle). The book brings togeth­er Ramos’s exquis­ite images of every­day life, which are both at once inti­mate and anony­mous. With the pas­sage of time, these seem­ing­ly pro­sa­ic images have evolved into heart­felt scenes of a van­ish­ing world. 

Although Ramos was shy, the cam­era became her ​“invis­i­ble shield”, allow­ing her to craft por­traits at a time when the prac­tice of street pho­tog­ra­phy was extreme­ly rare. ​“The cam­era was an exten­sion of my body,” she says. ​“I was qui­et. I didn’t car­ry on with long con­ver­sa­tions. It became some­what of a dance for both of us.” 

Read next: Pho­tos of what San Fran­cis­co real­ly looked like in the ​’60s

While peo­ple nev­er asked for a pho­to­graph, they respond­ed to the pres­ence of the cam­era with­out self-con­scious­ness or van­i­ty. Con­sid­er the man with bedrag­gled hair sit­ting on a bus, his small dog tucked neat­ly inside a sweater vest, or the tur­baned woman in a cut out dress play­ing to the cam­era as matrons smile on admir­ing­ly dur­ing an art open­ing at the de Young Muse­um. Ramos found moments of mutu­al­i­ty in these pass­ing encoun­ters, cap­tur­ing them with effortlessness.

“To me, all the peo­ple I pho­tographed were beau­ti­ful, sim­i­lar to draw­ing a mod­el in the class­room,” Ramos says. ​“I felt con­nect­ed to every­one I pho­tographed, as if we were all one. I think that was what I was try­ing to con­vey in my photography.” 

A Fear­less Eye: The Pho­tog­ra­phy of Bar­bara Ramos is pub­lished by Chron­i­cle Books.

Miss Rosen is a free­lance arts and pho­tog­ra­phy writer, fol­low her on X.

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