The design was better than the art at this fair, but it was still worth the trip for conversations with strangers and watching fashionable people walk by. I stumbled upon a few gems. There were Meghann Riepenhoff's cyanotypes (see detail photo), a couple 2-D Nevelsons, Noguchis, Sugimotos, Eggleston, Martin Puryear and best of all, a whole collection of Romare Beardens. I had a fun conversation with the man ahead of me in line, about his purple outfit with a butcher's skirt, vintage, by a European designer whose name I can't remember. His date/partner in the khaki pants seemed annoyed that I was so interested in the purple outfit, but his khaki outfit wasn't inspiring. Towards the end I met Philip, who took his film cameras out of his bag and wanted to share his experiences with Zeiss Ikons and Brownie Hawkeyes, plus the attributes of the cameras he had on hand.
In 2013, the Basque director Oskar Alegria introduced his film " The Search for Emak Bakia" at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival. An exceptional experimental film, it weaves documentary, storytelling, and history while revealing aspects of Man Ray's time in the Basque Country that are difficult to appreciate otherwise. Emak Bakia means "leave me in peace" in Basque and it was also the name of the house that Man Ray lived in. In this movie there are scenes of women sleeping whose eyes are captured just at the moment of awakening. These reminded me of some of my favorite Man Ray photos, such as the one of Kiki de Montparnasse. http://emakbakiafilms.com/fotos/?pid=1 Kiki and the African Mask, by Man Ray 1926