Mark I Chester

Artist Statement

I am a San Francisco gay "radical sex" photographer and I have been documenting my life in SF's sexual underground since the late 1970s. This year is the 30th anniversary of my first show in SF which was held in my studio. So this year I'll be showing a 30 year retrospective of my photographic work. Due to the adult nature of the images, this open studio is limited to adults only.

If I had to define my work, I'd call it fine art sexual portraiture. It's work that breaks down the barriers between normally exclusive genres of photography: fine art portraiture, social documentary work, performance photography and sexually explicit artwork. My work is socially conscious, politically challenging and artistically taboo.

The exhibition will cover 20 years, from 1981-2000, of fine art black and white photography and 10 years, from 2001-2009, of color digital photography. This work is a dark explicit diary that not only documents my life, it also documents the tremendous changes that have occurred in our community from sexual excess, to devastation and loss, leading to spiritual explorations, sexual healing and then back to sexual excess.

Books I have published will be available for viewing and purchase. The books are self published monographs of both my own personal work and the work of other artists.

There are extentive galleries and samples of my work on my website at http://markichester.com.