In the 1960s, Elaine Mayes was living in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, where she was making photographs and documenting American culture, street life and the popular music scene. She got a gig taking photographs at the now-historic Montery Pop Festival in 1967, which resulted in a remarkable book of images (Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, etc.).
Shortly after the Summer of Love, however, she accepted a position at the University of Minnesota to teach photography. She continued to teach — at Bard College, Hampshire College, Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, the International Center of Photography, and NYU — thereby influencing a generation or two of photographers.
In the meantime, of course, she continued to make her own photographs, but did little to promote her own work to the public.
She presented a brief but stunning retrsopective of her personal work in Portland, Oregon earlier this year. Just a few examples of her (relatively unkown) photographs are shown here, culled from three series: "auto-landscapes," natural landscapes, and personal "snaps".
I hope you find her images and words as inspiring as I do.
— Jim Casper
InterviewOn the Road in America: 1960s and ’70sPhotographer and teacher Elaine Mayes has made many, many photographs since the early 1960s, but has rarely shown them in public. She talks about her work, her ideas about photography, and current projects in an audio interview.View Images
Interview
On the Road in America: 1960s and ’70s
Photographer and teacher Elaine Mayes has made many, many photographs since the early 1960s, but has rarely shown them in public. She talks about her work, her ideas about photography, and current projects in an audio interview.
On the Road in America: 1960s and ’70s
Photographer and teacher Elaine Mayes has made many, many photographs since the early 1960s, but has rarely shown them in public. She talks about her work, her ideas about photography, and current projects in an audio interview.
Trending this Week
Photography As An Expression of Indulgence
Merging cinematic portraits with achingly-honest subtitle text, Sarah Bahbah’s photography explores emotive narratives of love, sex, and relationships from a woman’s perspective.
Announcing the 2019 LensCulture Visual Storytelling Award Winners!
Discover 36 remarkable photographers weaving compelling narratives with photographs and words, ranging from documentary and imaginative storytelling to fiction.
Call Me Heena: Hijra, The Third Gender
“I feel like a mermaid. My body tells me that I am a man but my soul tells me that I am a woman…” A penetrating, multi-year report on a unique group of people—who fall outside of Western notions of gender—trying to carve out a...
When the Dust Settles
Contemporary landscapes in photography: imprints of human activity and presence in the midst of absence.
Experimental Relationship
Pixy Liao started using her boyfriend as a “prop” in her photos, but that evolved into an ongoing 12-year project documenting their unconventional relationship, resulting in some eye-opening images.
Lithium: The Driving Force of the 21st Century
Follow the modern day gold rush of Lithium. A game-changer in the electric transport industry, this in-demand element may play a huge role in saving our planet, but not without its own grave consequences.
Related
Zona
Aleksandra Vajd documents former border-control areas throughout the EU — architecturally cold and grim places, designed to exert control over people until the fall of the Schengen borders in 2007.
Fine Art Printing in the Age of Instagram
Although more people than ever are producing (digital) pictures, we are also in a renaissance of analogue processes. One of Europe’s premier photographic printers offers his perspective.
Emotions a Nu
Being naked, this is nothing to hide.
Words are not even needed
Because the body speaks for itself.
Beautiful black and white nude portraits.
Studio 54
Caught in brilliant flash after flash — the 1978-80’s hedonistic decadence of the rich, beautiful and glamorous posers and actors who claimed this famed nightclub as their playground and parade ground.
Sukhum Divers
Most documentation of the (widely unrecognized) post-Soviet states like Abkhazia and Transnistria turns them into stereotyped time capsules from the Cold War era. Here, two photographers reveal a different side, focusing on the commonality between...
The Rehearsal of Space
A volume documenting the scientifically created objects, clothing and environments that enable man’s journeys into outer space.