Kinship at SFMOMA

There is an interesting group photography exhibit at SFMOMA called Kinship, which is described on the the museum website as: "...six contemporary photographers who share a special affinity with their subjects. Relationships are fundamental to each artist’s practice, whether they are familial, platonic, romantic, cultural, or geographic in nature."

That curatorial concept is tenuous but the show features three smashing photographers, starting with Alessandra Sanguinetti, who was born in New York, raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and now lives in the SF Bay Area. Her series of photos of two Argentinian cousins, Guillermina and Belinda, is mysteriously beautiful. (Pictured above is The Necklace, 1999.)

The cousins posed for Sanguinetti (The Black Cloud, 2000)...

...sometimes re-enacting their own dreams (Ophelias, 2002).

Shot over the course of 20 years, the series ends with both of them becoming mothers (Nine Months, 2007).

Another room contains the work of Paul Mpagi Sepuya, a 40-year-old photographer from San Bernardino.

His work is also stunningly beautiful on the surface, while playing with loaded subjects like yearning eroticism, homosexuality, and race (Model Study, 2021).

The name Black and White Men Together, a San Francisco gay organization begun in 1980, suddenly came to mind out of the depths of memory (Drop Scene, 2021).

Another remarkable photographer in the exhibit is Jarod Lew, born in Detroit and currently studying for his Masters Degree at Yale (We Come in Peace -- Stone, Matthew and Kevin, 2022).

The photos are from a project called Please Take Off Your Shoes, where Lew contacted young Chinese American strangers who exist in that liminal, jumbled space between pop American culture and the traditional Chinese cultures of their parents.

The combination of rosewood furniture and modern American young people is fascinating, (The Most American Thing (Tina), 2021). Kinship is at SFMOMA on the third floor until November 13th and is worth checking out.