Richard Gordon

San Francisco, Moscone Center

San Francisco, Moscone Center is a silver gelatin print from the series American Surveillance, a ten-year-long project where Richard Gordon photographed surveillance cameras across USA. In the image’s foreground we see the silhouette of a man, darkened and in contrast to the bright streetscape unfolding behind him. To the left, an American flag flutters in the wind, saluting the skyscrapers—among them the iconic architecture of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The mundanity of the scene is unsettled when we realize a surveillance camera on the top right corner reciprocates the stare of Gordon’s lens, or perhaps the other way. The otherwise quiet image then becomes an exercise of resistance: together with the other images from the series, Gordon’s photograph documents the changes that have taken place in architecture, civic life, especially in a post 9/11 experience of public space. In this new urban landscape, scrutiny and fear can be seen concretely through the normalized, ubiquitous presence of surveillance technology that Gordon captures.