Photos from 'Elaine Mayes: The Haight-Ashbury Portraits 1967–1968,' launching tonight, Thursday, November 17, from 6–8 PM, at @deborahbellphotographs Mayes (born 1936) was a young photographer living in San Francisco’s lively Haight-Ashbury District during the 1960s. She had photographed the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and, later that year, during the waning days of the Summer of Love, embarked on a set of portraits of youth culture in her neighborhood. By that time, the hippie movement had turned from euphoria to harder drugs, and the Haight had become less of a blissed-out haven for young people seeking a better way of life than a halfway house for runaway teens. Realizing the gravity of the cultural moment, Mayes shifted from the photojournalistic approach she had applied to musicians and concert-goers in Monterey to making formal portraits of people she met on the street. Choosing casual, familiar settings such as stoops, doorways, parks and interiors, Mayes instructed her subjects to look into her square-format camera, to concentrate and be still: she made her exposures as they exhaled. Mayes’ familiarity with her subjects helped her to evade mediatized stereotypes of hippies, presenting instead an understated and unsentimental group portrait of the individual inventors of a fleeting cultural moment. 'Elaine Mayes: The Haight-Ashbury Portraits 1967–1968' is the first monograph on this work. Published by @damiani_books Edited with text by Kevin Moore @fultonstreet More information via linkinbio. Deborah Bell Photographs Elaine Mayes book signing Thursday, November 17: 6–8 PM 526 West 26th Street, Room 411 New York, NY 10001 Phone: 212.249.9400 Email: [email protected] @deborahbellphotographs @elainemayesphoto @alexandrafanning_pr @fotofocuscincinnati @culturalcounsel #elainemayes #elainemayeshaightashbury #haightashbury https://www.instagram.com/p/ClEdMZop65d/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=