After Landfall (TBW Books, 2018), and The White Sky (Stanley / Barker, 2020), The Golden City (Stanley / Barker, 2022), is the third wonderful book by American photographer Mimi Plumb. Born in Berkeley and raised on the outskirts of San Francisco, Mimi Plumb dedicates this latest work to her San Francisco years. The photographs are taken between 1984 and 2020 in the area where the city of San Francisco falls apart, and where the glow, glitter and sheen of the Golden City loses the radiance and the charm of its magical aura. Neo-liberalism and Reagan hedonism dissolve and merge into a desolate land, a manifest symbol of the progressive disparity between the rich and poor, and a pneumatic void of disillusionment. Environmental degradation, city dumps, abandoned liminal areas, buildings in ruins, material and cultural debris describe the psychological anguish of a civilization without a future.

In an abandoned parking lot, a wall of graffiti quotes a Crass song. Not just a band but a sabotage unit of the English society. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War and during the Malvinas / Falklands crisis, they created an international diplomatic incident by spreading the tape of a fake phone call between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. This provocative sound collage between the voices of the two Western leaders made it appear that they were confessing war crimes and occult interests.

The portraits of the author's acquaintances and friends are protagonists in the second half of the book. Evenings and nights where the unlikely and extravagant patrons of the Crystal Pistol and the Palace are lit by a flash of light. With a mask and a disguise one can continue to dream even if only for one night.

Gianpaolo Arena

INTERVIEW

Gianpaolo Arena: Could you tell us something more about how your project “The Golden City” started? What was your main inspiration that led you to explore the areas around San Francisco borders?
Mimi Plumb: San Francisco was a rich visual resource for the stories I wanted to tell in the 1980s. I became acutely aware of climate change in the early 1980s and could see the environmental degradation that existed in the city and its outskirts. Particularly in the poorer neighborhoods where I lived, Bernal Heights, Mission District, and the nearby Dog Patch neighborhood along the San Francisco Bay. One particular cove, a long time sewage outlet, which we called Tire Beach, was filled with 1000s of tires and bullet ridden automobiles, televisions, bed frames and broken chairs. In the background loomed the smokestack of a nearby power plant. Along South Van Ness Avenue in the Mission District, a long abandoned gas station was framed by a billboard, proclaiming without irony, "Dangerously Close to Homemade." An abandoned parking lot with the graffiti from the Crass song, Nagasaki Nightmare, spoke to the heart of my concerns, "man made power, man made pain, deadly reign...deadly rain."
The second half of the book, mostly portraits of both friends and strangers, reflects the
psychological angst that I felt in myself and my community in San Francisco during the Reagan years. Global warming, civil wars in the Middle East and Central America, and the election of a former movie actor to the presidency of the United States, all contributed to the sense of 'no future.' One of the last pictures in the book, the girl in the polka dot dress hiding her head, is a stand-in for me not knowing what to do about it all. And my cat, Pearl, waiting and crouching, is a portrait of me, as the world then and now grapples with climate change, war and poverty.

GA: Do you think your approach is close to that of other photographers, contemporary or from the past?
MP: The sequence of images in the book follows the progression, and timeline of my making of the images. I began the series by describing various landscapes in my local surroundings. I wanted to heighten and intensify the images to get at the angst and fears that I was experiencing. That's when I added the flash to the camera and photographed friends and strangers.

Photographers have been concerned about the environment throughout the history of the medium. The suburban landscape of California was an important feature of my photographs from the early to mid 1970s. "The New Topographics, Photographs of Man-Altered Landscapes", show in 1975, was a recognition by museums of a shift in how photographers were depicting the environment. I think we were photographing man-altered, built environments because that was what was happening before our eyes, in our hometowns, and our cities.

GA: Please tell us a few anecdotes which happened while shooting or in some particular pictures... Could you tell us something more about the creation of the book “The Golden City”?
MP: A few months ago I wrote this introduction to The Golden City which speaks to your question.

"I once lived on the edges of the city where the rents were cheap. Nearby, on the summit of the hill, were folded layers of radiolarian chert, the fossilized remains of microscopic creatures called radiolaria. A large crevice in the hillside was a reminder of the ever-present threat of an earthquake.
Warm Water Cove, known as Tire Beach, along the bay, was a spectacle of tires and abandoned cars, where one day the chimney of the power station rose above the fiery destruction of the 25th Street Pier. I watched planes flying over the city dump of cardboard hillsides, and tiny downtown buildings on the far-off horizon reminded me of Oz. My cat, Pearl, kept watch on the rooftop of my flat.
Nights out dancing at the Crystal Pistol in the Mission. Listening to a punk polka band at the Oasis. Neil, the clarinet player wore faux leather naugahosen, spikes protruding from his head. Sometimes we played pool at Palace Billiards. At the Exotic/Erotic Ball, a bird man and a nurse hid in the corners. A steely-eyed silver man in his tuxedo stared back at me from behind his mask, the camera flash shining a light on him.
Days were visits to abandoned schools and derelict gas stations, a billboard claiming "dangerously close to homemade." The magical clanging of the San Francisco cable cars was a world away, and the idealism of the 1960s seemed long gone. The Golden City of San Francisco, fraying at its edges, revealing a deep chasm between the rich and poor."

GA: What has been your 3 favorite photo-books in the last few years?
MP: I’m not sure I can narrow it down to 3 photobooks! Some recent photobooks I’ve loved are Paul Guilmoth’s At night gardens grow, Ahndraya Parlato’s Who is changed and who is dead, and Sabiha Cimen’s Hafiz.