The Streets Of San Francisco

Still enthusiastic about photography at 93, Fred Lyon talks to Geoff Harris about the historic, low-light masterpieces in his new book San Francisco Noir

San Francisco is one of the most influential cities in the world – an atmospheric place forever associated with the gold rush, gumshoe movies and Chinatown, beatniks and hippies, and more recently, the triumphs and excesses of Silicon Valley. Few photographers have a deeper knowledge of the city and its subcultures than Fred Lyon, a widely published documentary and portrait photographer who is still going strong at 93. Fred, who is more articulate and insightful than a lot of photographers half his age, has just released San Francisco Noir, a new collection of his classic black & white film images.

Moody night and low-light shots of the streets (and street life) of San Francisco dominate this fascinating chronicle of 1940 to 1960, at a time when very high ISOs or easily affordable and portable location lighting were something that Fred and his peers could only dream of. Of course, it helped to have such a myth-making metropolis to shoot. As Fred explains in his introduction to the book, ‘What a town! Bursting with energy, San Francisco seized fistfuls of its most doubtful characters, anointing them with instant celebrity – and morality be damned... Just turn up the collar of your trench coat, settle your fedora low on your head and strike a match to that cigarette dangling from your mouth. You’re in.’