 Then I hit the Start Webinar button and that's where we'll see people come in the attendees. Welcome, friends. We're going to get started in just a moment and let folks fill in the room. Thank you for joining us tonight. I'm going to put a link into the chat box for tonight's document. This has library news, upcoming announcements, as well as links to our speaker author. And then as we chat tonight and as Jasmine does her presentation, we'll do some live resources if they come up and add those to the list. And lots of links back to the library, of course. So we'll keep, we'll open in just a few moments. If you know what native land you're joining us from, you can put that in there. And if you don't know, you can look it up on that map, native land. Welcome. It's nice to virtually see you. I can see your names. I can feel your spirit. All right, it's seven o'clock. Let's get started. Again, thank you for being here tonight. And this is part of SFPL's Women's Her Story Month. And I have just also finished celebrating Black History Month, which was January and February, which we call more than a month. I'm going to dive deep into her story and I have been able to meet the most amazing women in these two campaigns. And I'm so excited tonight to continue with that journey, and not only have Jasmine Darsnik, but also joining us as library and Christine Moreta was the curator of our historic photography collection. So amazing women all around and I thank you for being part of it as well. Like I said, this is part of her story. And we do have a couple more events coming up. Lots of book lists, lots of resources for you to find out about all of the amazing women in the world. And in San Francisco. We do want to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Romitush Sholoni peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples, and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Romitush community. And right now I'm throwing in the chat, and I see that I've been throwing all those chats to the host. So forgive me, I will throw them in again later. So here's the links to the resource list of many, many things indigenous first peoples, particularly on a lonely land and great websites you can learn more about also reading lists. We love our reading lists at the library and sites that you could donate to. Tomorrow we have these amazing humans part of the 1619 program, and this event is at 1030 in the morning. And it is kind of youth focused but wow, these amazing humans, it's going to be great. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Nicole Hannah Jones, and Artivist Nicholas Smith in Convo and this will be live on YouTube only. So check it out there and I think it is time sensitive. So you won't want to miss this and I just popped it in the chat. SFPL celebrates on the same page which is our bi-monthly read in San Francisco where we encourage you all to read the same books at the same time. And this March and April we're celebrating Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natalie Diaz for her book, Post Colonial Love Poem. So we can pick this book up now at any of our library locations, and she will be in conversation with Michelle Cruz Gonzalez, educator, artist, and ex punk rock drummer. And that will happen Tuesday the 26th. And then we have a book club prior to the author visit so come check that out. We have not had many poetry books. So I think it's going to be a good conversation. On Saturday, we have the amazing one to severe curates a panel of women talking about roomfulness gathering, and you will have to come see what that exactly means. And then the amazing I missed the 20th century cafe so much I want a piece of honey cake and butterscotch drink hot butterscotch. Michelle Pozine owner of what was 20th century cafe will come talk about her journey as a small business entrepreneur, and now cookbook author and what she's up to now Tuesday, March 22, 7pm in the virtual library. So this is pot not. Oh, I really need to change just like none of this is not with not possible without the help of our friends in the library, who didn't help the help us with more than a month but also help us with her story and all the programs we do at the library. So thank you friends for all of your support and what you bring to us. All right, without further ado, I am happy to introduce Jasmine dars Nick, and Jasmine's book has been floating around my office to everyone. I think there's about seven people in my department's been floating for best and desk. We knew that we wanted to get Jasmine at the library and was just a matter of time. And I think this is the perfect month this book is a really old to women and owed to San Francisco. Jasmine dars Nick debut novel song of a captive bird was a New York Times book review editor's choice, an LA Times bestseller and long listed for the Center for Fiction Prize and awards awarded the writer center first novel prize. Jasmine dars Nick is also the author of the New York Times bestselling the good daughter, a memoir of my mother's hidden life, her books have been published in 17 countries. She was born in Tehran, Iran, and came to America when she was five years old. She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, a JD from the University of California, and a PhD in English from Princeton. And she is now a professor of English and creative writing at the California College of Arts. And I think that's fascinating that she teaches English to artists going to be. I hope we talk about that. And she lives in the Bay Area with her family. So, without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Jasmine. You can put your questions in the chat or in the q amp a and YouTube we welcome you as well we'll bring back your questions to. All right, I'm going to stop sharing turn it over to Jasmine. Thank you so much, Anissa. So I always, I can't not say this. I came to America as a child and libraries were my home they were my refuge and I still feel like you can plunk me down pretty much anywhere on the planet and as long as I can find my way to the library. So this, yeah, hashtag library love for sure. And forever. This, this evening is so special to me because of that and also because it's women's history month and because I get to share bohemians which is a love letter to San Francisco so this just is the perfect. I've been looking forward to this conversation for so long. I'm going to be talking about bohemians and amazing women artists who populate its pages, the world of 1920 San Francisco, their art, their lives or photography will also have time for questions at the end so make sure to, to ask any questions that you have of me. I'm going to share my screen I've got lots of pictures tonight and lots of stories so I'm going to pop over if you give me a sec to my photographs. Oh is that moment. Thank you for your patience through that awkwardness. And hopefully now you just see my, my photograph and the cover of the bohemians. Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay, thank you Anissa. I am, I am unable to see anything but my own screen so I appreciate that. All right, so bohemians is a novel about Dorothea Lang this woman over here sitting atop her car during the depression. One of our great American photographers, Dorothea Lang is sometimes not known by name some people only know her by the photograph that she took in 1936 this is her photograph 19 in 1936 photograph my grandmother. And it is probably one of the most reproduced photographs of all time. And certainly has, has been associated with her sometimes almost exclusively this is the one work that people know about me. The bohemians, my novel the novel I'm going to talk about tonight peels back the years and it takes us to San Francisco, and it introduces us to a Lang before she was an icon, when she was just, she was a young woman, and she was new, she was new to the city and she was discovering herself. San Francisco was the place where Dorothea Lang said she found herself. So, even though we don't often associate her with San Francisco or the 20s. There's no doubt in my mind that for Dorothea Lang, this was the place this was the place that transformed her and electrified her and activated her. These are the places that happen to you and places that you choose for Lang San Francisco was both of these things. She was 23 years old when she arrived in San Francisco, here she is at about that time in 1918. She thought she was just passing through town. Instead, she stayed for the rest of her life. The city that she found San Francisco in 1918 was only really just a decade old, having been almost totally destroyed in the earthquake and fires of 1906. Then as now it was a city at the edge of the continent, a place of beauty and promise, and also tragedy. This is the iconic fairy building. This would have greeted Dorothea Lang. This is 1927, so a few years later, but the fairy building would have been her first point of entry into San Francisco. And if you just notice in the background, no bridges yet, really it seems like the whole East Bay is just a wash of hills at this point. It wasn't. It was a much quieter place. It was a much different place than the San Francisco and the Bay Area that we all know now. In May of 1919, the month that she arrived, soldiers were shipping out by the thousands from the West Coast, and the Spanish flu was advancing into the city. The first wave was about to hit. Lang's time North Beach, which is the area that would become so important to her, and is also very important to the Bohemians, was still populated by Italian families who come over in the 19th century to work as fishermen on the nearby waterfronts. And Irish enclaves also existed, though their populations were far less robust than they've been in the 19th century. The residents of this part of town, North Beach, were laborers, artisans, farmers, mechanics, shopkeepers, fishermen, working class people, living in humble cottages, some dating back to the 1850s. The bright, many days of the Jazz Age were glimmering off in the distance, but for women, this was already a time of possibility. This illustration, this comic from the era, shows two women on the left. You've got a woman in about 1910. On the right, you've got a woman in 1920. Just a decade of time saw such tremendous changes in women's lives, and of course, fashions one way those changes got registered. I don't have the title on here, but the title, the caption for this illustration is what a difference a decade makes. And it did make a huge difference in the lives of women. In the first decades of the 20th century, just to set a stage for you for Bohemians and for Lang's entry into San Francisco, young women especially were in open rebellion against the past. Lang had first joined this rebellion in her native New Jersey. She was born in Hoboken. But it's most delightfully raucous interludes took place in San Francisco. And here are some of our delightfully raucous San Francisco ladies. This would have been pretty risque. They're flashing their calves here. It looks like they're getting, they're boarding, maybe a train here, these San Francisco ladies were probably I'd say at the forefront of the liberation movement. Now, of course, women in California had gotten the vote earlier than women in the rest of the country. So when Lane comes in 1918, she's entering a pretty progressive place, a place where relatively women are are already actively claiming their spaces and their places in the city. Here a couple other San Francisco ladies they're out at Ocean Beach. Looks like they're about to oops sorry. They're so wily. They won't, they won't sit still long enough for me. So these ladies are at the beach. And these ladies that insist on being shown are partaking of alcohol and it is impossible of course to talk about the 1920s without talking about prohibition and the way San Francisco observe prohibition, or actually more to the point, didn't observe prohibition. So for the minute that the sale of alcohol becomes illegal in 1920 San Francisco just was not having it. The city had more bars than any other city in the United States, and most of them were located in North Beach, the Legion Club, the spotlight, the colony club, these and myriad others made San Francisco the quote wettest city in the west. Prohibition had been spearheaded by white Anglo Protestants back east, when in the Midwest in San Francisco in 1920 San Francisco is a city of immigrants really two thirds of the city residents are immigrants or have at least one immigrant parent for the Italians that Irish the Jews, the Germans, alcohol is simply part of their culture, they wouldn't and they didn't give it up. I think you can, you can see that these ladies are very happily partaking there. And in San Francisco, bootleggers were almost thought of as public servants, the coastal fog for which San Francisco is so well known, provided the perfect cover for smuggling liquor across from the coast into the city. And to keep things flow flowing in 1926, San Francisco actually passed a law against prohibition they pass a law against prohibition so there's the spirit of San Francisco in the 1920s. It defies prohibition by passing its own edict against the the the illegality of liquor. So a thing about women and drinking. By pushing drinking underground in the United States prohibition actually made women partake of alcohol more for the ladies the allure of the speak easy culture in these years was far more tempting than the musty old saloons, where drinking had been the province of just men until prohibition in San Francisco. So the nightlife most of this defiance of prohibition is happening in North Beach, and then in the old Barbary Coast. These are these these storied venues like the hippodrome spider Kelly's. The places where the liquors flowing and the sexes are mixing and also where San Francisco skins are are hearing jazz for the first time so it's in the old Barbary Coast these venues in the quote black and tan establishments that San Francisco skins are first listening to jazz music. And all of this is a stone's throw away from where Dorothea Lane is about to make her home in the city. Here we've got a slew of folks enjoying themselves in the city around about this time. It looks like it's New Year's Eve but I don't think in San Francisco you needed much reason for a celebration. It was also a segregated city so as much as it was a glittering and beautiful and wondrous place it was also a place of tremendous discrimination and and a lot of hardship for a particular pop population and that was the Chinese in San Francisco. In the Bohemians you get this story through Dorothea Lange's assistant Dorothea Lange when she comes to San Francisco in 1918 and establishes her studio has a Chinese American assistant and through her, though she is not mentioned much in Dorothea Lange's she's a big part of the Bohemians and through this character Caroline Lee Dorothea Lange's assistant Dorothea becomes very aware of what's happening in the city becomes aware of the prejudices in the violence that are particularly against women in this time. These were real campaign posters by the way, the one time mayor then Senator from California ran on a campaign keep California white in 1920, and these campaign posters would have been papered around the city in those first years when Dorothea Lange arrives here on the west coast. In the town, the area where the Chinese were relegated was the only place where the Chinese were allowed to live in San Francisco, and it was, it was a place for women of a special. Especially difficult hard time for women because many of the women who came over from China to America during this era were survivors of the human trafficking that was flourishing in San Francisco at the time and that's a story also that's told in the Bohemians through the character of Caroline Lee. Now this place Montgomery block. Montgomery block is was artist colony that stood that stood where the trans America pyramid stands now. It was built as the largest for decades it was the largest and also safest office building in San Francisco. The headquarters quarters of newspapers lawyers different professionals from about 1853 to 1890. It was the only major downtown building to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire. And this in the background this is Jackson Square. And there you would see that's where Montgomery block one stood. And now it's the site, as I said, the trans America pyramid. This area had a very colorful name and excuse me just before I tell you it's the name of it it's it's curious names. This is a photograph just after the earthquake and fires and to the right here is monkey block this is Jackson Square. And as you can see there's devastation all around but this building built of concrete would have been was one of the only ones survived. And as it also that it owes its survival that it owed its survival to the proximity to a whiskey factory over here somewhere in Jackson Square. I've heard that story a few times and maybe someone can let me know if it's apocryphal or true. By the time by the 1890s 1900s, the monkey block, which is the nickname that Montgomery block takes on at this time. The building falls into disrepair. And this is when the artists come slinking and slithering and sashing in. This is from a novel actually it's a crime novel set in Montgomery block. And you can see the this little caption here the disreputable old building at 706 Montgomery street. San Francisco turned out to be the perfect hangout not just for artists and writers, but also for murder. This is a novel that shows that shows monkey block in its heyday so to speak the time when it was populated by artists and writers there were about 800 artists and writers and musicians and journalists who lived in this building including Mark Twain. This is when Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera came through town in 1930. They also stopped in. It was for a time, a wondrous place and the hub of bohemian San Francisco life. This is the only picture I've ever seen from inside monkey block. So this is Columbus Avenue you're looking up to Columbus it's a, it's a procession. It's actually come through town, and this photograph is taken from within Montgomery block I've never seen any other photographs taken from within the building itself so this is a pretty special image, it was taken by Ken Kathcart. It was a map maker as well. Dorothea Lang to the right over here gains her entree into monkey block in this bohemian scene through her romance and eventual marriage to Maynard Dixon who's over on the left over here. Maynard Dixon was almost 20 years older than Dorothea Lang. He was when they met in 1918, 1919, 1919, a very celebrated painter. He was called the king of Bohemia so Montgomery block he had a studio very close by, and he was one of the most colorful of a band of very colorful characters. When, when they marry in 1920, there's a piece that runs in the Chronicle I think with the title bride keeps identity that's the actual headline announcing their marriage, which tells you something about the times and the way women were regarded when they married. It meant that she was planning to do the very unorthodox thing to keep working, even after her marriage. One of the pleasures of writing the bohemians was bringing this milieu back to life so bringing monkey block back to life bringing characters like Maynard Dixon here he is on the left in a caricature. In the center there is walking probably around the financial district with a canvas under one arm and his 10 gallon hat on his head he's probably got his cowboy boots on, and he's got a silver tip cane, and there he goes through San Francisco. One of the great pleasures of writing the novel was bringing these characters back to life. It's a place that doesn't exist. So I hear from people even people who were third and fourth generation San Franciscans they've never heard of a place called monkey block. And that's because it was torn down in the 1950s and this is a photograph that was taken during its destruction. Unfortunately, it survived the earthquake only to be destroyed as urban development was taking over the city. It missed historic preservation movement, the historic preservation movement by just a few years, maybe if it had made it a few years longer we'd still have it, but it wasn't and it was torn down in the late 50s. It became a parking lot for a time, and then it became the trans America pyramid. But back to when it was still the vibrant hub of bohemian San Francisco. The, the novel opens with Dorothea Lang falling into this world through Caroline Lee her, her first friend in San Francisco, Caroline Lee has an apartment in this building. It's one of the few places that'll rent to her as a mixed race woman. She has a really tough go of it and it's only among these artists that she's able to find a home. Here are some of those San Francisco bohemians painters and writers. This is surely a stage shop but one of the things that I love about the picture is that there are women in it. There are women in there arguing and drinking and they're right up in the scene. Things were not equal but it is extraordinary that in San Francisco women were present and they were part of the, of the artistic scene. This is copas which is one of the main, one of the main settings in bohemians. It was a restaurant in Montgomery block, and this is where the poor the impoverished artists would come and sometimes they would exchange their art for a plate of pasta and some tiramisu maybe they would paint murals on the walls of copas and in exchange they'd get food to eat. Here's a menu to copas and now I'm going to take you to a little deeper into Lang's story here. So to, to give you a sense of where Dorothea Lang comes in what she's doing in San Francisco when she comes in 1918. I have to tell you first a little bit about women and photography at this time in history. So women have been part of American photography, almost from its inception. By the end of the 19th century women were beginning to pursue higher education, they were beginning to enter the professions. And at the same time, photography is emerging so women are emerging, and photography is emerging as a, as a form of livelihood and artistic practice. There are better and better, better printing processes and smaller cameras. And at the likes of George Eastman his 1888 Kodak camera eliminates eliminates the need for really heavy equipment making it even more accessible to women. And photography is really something that's sold to women through its signature Kodak girl that Eastman campaign like the this later campaign the brownie girl encouraged thousands of women to take up photography. And this campaign laid the groundwork for a legacy of talented women like Dorothea Lang entering art photography, portrait photography and photojournalism. However, while women were coming into photography. There was this illusion that women somehow had this special feminine grace and sensibility that made them uniquely suited to portrait photography and that's the kind of photographer that Dorothea Lang was when she first when she first started out. And that women were particularly skilled at unveiling a sitter's inner character getting into their emotional life toward the end of the 19th century and into the 19 teens. The practice of taking portraits in the home was a way that women like Lang entered the profession of photography. Let's see, before she became the extraordinary photographer who took images like my great mother who was photographing the blighted streets and roadways of the depression. Before long before this, Dorothea Lang was a society photographer in 1920 San Francisco, and this is the brochure to Lang studio at 540 center street the building still stands you can still go there there are no tenant there's no tenant at the moment but you can go right up to the gate and and you'll see what was the site of Dorothea Lang's first studio in San Francisco. She said, I was the one you went to if you could afford it, she said, with a mix of pride, I think, and irony. It seems almost like an impossible contradiction. How could a photographer who becomes so closely associated with the poor have spent so many years of her career, about 10 or 12 catering to the fabulously wealthy. Lang's background offers some clues. She was born to a middle class family of German, German origin. She grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. She fell ill with polio when she was seven years old and that would mark her for the rest of her life. She was bedridden and walked with a limp. Her father abandoned the family when she was 12 years old, and Dorothea Lang was raised by a single mother. While her while her family was never totally destitute, Dorothea Lang knew from the time she was a child, what it was like to be lost to be financially insecure, and to be in dire straits, and I think you see that later in her work. But as a young woman, she really doesn't have the option to go to university. She doesn't have the option to get any particular, you know, any fancy training. She has to cobble together apprenticeships. And so she does not think of herself as an artist. She thinks of herself as a tradeswoman. And the work that she produces she's very proud of because she's able to support herself, not a small thing in these years, especially coming from Lang's background with her family, not encouraging her at all. Her mother wanted her to become a teacher. She was not interested in that at all. But she really had to forge her way forward by herself. She didn't have mentors and models and any kind of, you know, assured place at all in this field. Her dream when she was young was to travel the world and she only made it as far as San Francisco. I can tell you about that a little bit more. But when she comes to San Francisco, she is robbed the first day, true story, the first day Dorothea Lang gets to San Francisco, she's robbed and she has no money. She has to take a job at a five and dime shop, and she gets a room at the Mary Elizabeth Inn, which is, which was a boarding house for single women. A little bit over a year later she's running this studio at 540 Sutter Street, one of the most successful portrait studios in the city. By force of her wits and her hard work, she had set up shop near Union Square, the city's toniest shopping district, calling herself Miss Lang. She, she also supported her husband so Dorothea Lang and Maynard Dixon Mary in 1920. He's the famous big name at the time. While he lives out the Bohemian dream, she's working to support him she's working so that he doesn't have to do commercial work which he hates. She's also supporting once they have children she's supporting the children as well through her work. It doesn't seem that Lang resented this, not in the beginning at least she was proud of her success proud of her ability to support her family. And she didn't seem to feel inferior to her clientele so what you're looking at are some of these early photographs from Lang studio 540 Sutter Street. She's photographing the creme de la creme of San Francisco society. We're talking about the Levi Strausses and the fly shockers and you know the sort of roll call of the who's who of San Francisco at this time. They are Dorothea Lang's clients. She actually thought of herself as a kind of educator so she didn't think even though there was a wide distance between her and her clientele. She thought of herself as kind of someone who could enlighten her patrons about the new art, relatively new art of photography. And then for their part, a lot of her clients were progressive and open minded, and they had an appreciation for the arts and they were open to her different ways of taking portraits. Now, these portraits that you're looking at they might not seem revolutionary, and they weren't radical, but they were definitely they have had a different spirit than most traditional portraits so if you think of the traditional portrait. Very staid, people are almost costumed, no smiles. Dorothea Lang had a really different kind, different really different idea of what portrait photographs should be. She really felt like a photograph should show the inside so that it should reflect something of the essence of the person. So she did away with the fussy backdrops and she liked to photograph her subjects in their regular clothes so no fancy you know Sunday best. But rather the kind of garments they would have been wearing in the home in less formal moments of their lives. And she had a really wonderful touch with her clients. This is Edith Catton actually who is a light became a lifelong friend of Lang's actually they became genuine friends, women like Edith Catton were were educated they were part of the city's cultural elite, but they were also dedicated to building up San Francisco San Francisco's cultural institutions. And, and so it was actually Lang didn't feel like she was compromising she felt that she was giving something to this clientele, and that she, she also was, was at least she felt, she felt that she was participating in the lives of people who were bringing beauty to San Francisco that's how she saw her work in these years. This is Dorothy a Lang in her studio at 540 Center Street it's a hazy image but there she is holding her camera for a photographer I don't know maybe this is a, this isn't that atypical but she didn't like to be photographed much so I don't have a lot of photographs of Dorothy a Lang but here she is in her studio at 540 Center Street. These images that I'm showing you they've been beautifully archived and curated and digitized by the Oakland Museum of California so if you are interested I would definitely head over to their archive, because they are represented wonderfully in the Oakland Museum of California's series of her work. So, let's see if we go. Now, when she comes to San Francisco another thing that was so wondrous and wonderful to write about were the women who become her friends. These are characters in the Bohemians, all of them, they were also extraordinary. They all deserve novels and I wish I had. I wish I could write novels about all of them, but it was for sure so much fun to bring them in and to show the company that Dorothy a Lang kept when she came. You're looking at an image by one of those photographers. This is Alma Levenson's self self portrait she called this, it was her self portrait that she took. In San Francisco had always been. Sorry, let me back up for a second. So, San Francisco had always been a pretty welcoming place for artists, but it was actually the 1906 earthquake and fires that kicked open the door for women. The established photography photographers. What, what there was the figures there were left San Francisco at this time. People like Arnold gente who was actually the was one of Dorothy a Lang's mentors. He went to Carmel and then he went to New York so the establishment scatters after the 1906 earthquake, and this creates actually a vacuum, which is where the women photographers come in of necessity and temperament. These women. These women are making their own money, and they're taking groundbreaking pictures and sustaining each other's careers that's also really interesting being the way that these women support each other. As each of these women asked what kind of pictures she wanted to take. She also based the question of what kind of life she wanted to live. And then looking at one another that the members of this group, Dorothy a Lang and her crew, so to speak, began to answer that question for themselves. This is and breakman so I'm going to briefly introduce you to a few of these women these amazing women and then I'm going to switch over to question answer time but not without first introducing you to a few of these women and breakman was was already making photographs long before Dorothy a Lang ever came to California. Beginning in 1901 two decades before Lang arrived. She and breakman was already trekking up to the Sierra Nevada, photographing herself at the edge of a cliff like a swaggering buccaneer, or else posing nude in the crook of a wind warped tree. But here she is. This is a photograph that was taken. This figure right here is and breakman, and it was taken in Dorothy a Lang studio. I think this is Dorothy a Lang right here. These are all photographers, and the point of the photograph is, is that they are paying homage to the woman who started who started it off for them in California women especially felt a kinship with her because she was such a renegade. But you see here I think the cheekiness and the joy and the pleasure they had in each other's company, and, and there's and breakman residing over it all at 540 center street and Dorothy a Lang studio was a kind of salon. It was a place where artists would gather in in the nighttime hours. She put away her photography equipment and it became the place where the bohemians would gather. And here she is. Here she is that is that swaggering buccaneer. This is a self portrait she took up in the Sierra Nevada. And here you've got we call them nowadays nude selfies is really what she was taking art photographs that were taken up in, up in the mountains there near, near Lake Tahoe that showcased women's bodies the nude. This beautiful kinship this beautiful affinity between the female form and the landscape. This is and bring men's portrait of Isadora Duncan. So she also photographed other women artists and that's really interesting to that all of these women love to photograph other accomplished women they were really dedicated to showing off each other's successes so interesting. And I think it's my final and bring men shot. So she did extraordinary landscape photographs but she didn't only do landscape photographs she was quite accomplished also as a studio photographer. This is image in Cunningham. This is one of the first women that Dorothea Lang meets when she comes to San Francisco. She was more established than Lang when they met. She had already run a portrait studio in Seattle. And while she continued to do portrait work to support herself. She was already making art photography so remember Dorothea Lang at this time doesn't think of herself as an artist she thinks of herself as a tradeswoman woman but she's like these other women who are doing really interesting work and the seeds are planted. It's beginning it's beginning to ruin her it won't come to fruition until the 1930s but it's among these women observing their work that she begins to see what photography can be. Image in Cunningham when Dorothea Lang meets her she is living in what she feels is exile up in the Oakland Hills. She has two small children, but as Dorie Dorothea says in the novel that even in those, even in that situation. Image in Cunningham made beauty she made extraordinary photographs, even when she was up in those Oakland Hills, minding two children. She was actively photographing and taking really beautiful photographs of her children and the, the environment around the house. Here she is a few years on where she's not, she's not in the throes of that, not quite deep in that exile anymore. And here are a few of Image in Cunningham's photographs so this is I think this is also a self portrait. She also took nude portraits of male subjects which was really renegade very revolutionary at the time and got her into trouble, not that it stopped her. Another Image in Cunningham photograph. And here, another photograph of Cunningham's. Remember that these women photographers love to photograph other women artists this is Image in Cunningham's portrait of Frida Kahlo Kahlo comes in 1930 to San Francisco. In those years she was called Mrs Rivera. No one was paying much attention to Frida Kahlo, but Image in Cunningham was paying much attention to Frida Kahlo and she pulled her aside and she took some really extraordinary photographs, portraits of Frida Kahlo, a young Frida Kahlo, who was just just beginning to fashion herself. She later would photograph Ruth Asawa the San Francisco sculptor. They became lifelong friends. These are beautiful photographs of dancers of dancers over at Mills College I don't have those as part of my presentation and Image in took photographs all her life I love these pictures of Image in until her, you know, very, very, very late in her life just months, months before she died. She's still taking photographs and I've heard stories from people that they remember Image in Cunningham walking around North Beach, and she always always had her camera flung around her neck. And the last of the women, and I'm nearly nearly done with my presentation is Consuelo Kanaga. So, in this milieu of Image in Cunningham and Alma Levinson Consuelo Kanaga is is turning her eye to also to the streets and she's working as one of the first women photojournalists in the country so she's working for one of the first publications when Dorothea Lang meets her and she is she is she absolutely she blows Dorothea Lang away. Dorothea Lang I'll give you her description of Consuelo Kanaga when they meet. She lived in a Portuguese hotel in North Beach which was entirely Portuguese working men, except for Consuelo. She would go anywhere and do anything. That's without that's the essence of Consuelo Kanaga for Dorothea Lang and remember Lang is a studio photographer she is not in the streets. Here's Consuelo Kanaga, at least a decade before Lang doing photojournalism out in the streets and then maybe most notably, she is taking beautiful portraits of people of color. This becomes a signature of her work. She takes beautiful portraits of many different communities African Americans among them. I'll just show you a couple of Consuelo Kanaga's portraits. This is Kanaga's portrait of Langston Hughes. This is her famous, probably her most famous image. She is a tree of life to them. And also another one of Consuelo Kanaga, an action shot. All right, this is that my last photograph I love this photograph so much it is over here it is. This is Alton Cunningham. This is Alma Levinson and this is Consuelo Kanaga. They were friends all their lives so they met as young women. They supported each other in all kinds of ways. They lent each other space in their dark rooms they advanced each other's names and different photography establishments at different shows. They were each other's champions and I love this photograph because they are in the later stages of their life they're still together and they're still they're still taking pictures. They are restless and they are insatiable. This is the novel where you can find their stories. And also, this is a companion guide. If you like this kind of thing these kind of pictures and stories. I collected them in a guide to Bohemian San Francisco, you can easily access that over on my website which actually has also a lot of other photographs. So, I'm going to pop out of my screen share. And I've got. Looks like I'm right at time. Yes, that was amazing that was like the perfect women's history event. Thank you so much. And Christina I welcome you to pop on to if you like kind of. There is one question. I know as we like start the people start putting the question. So I'm going to grab the one question from our Q&A, which was, did artists just take over the monkey block or was it like a desanction kind of thing. That sounds like a great idea to me. Yeah, I know. I mean, we could really use something like that or a few things, few buildings like that. You know, it just it kind of got run down is what happened I think the landlords just weren't taking care of it and the rents went way down. So, at a certain time, it was really sort of fabulous building but then lawyers and these different professionals went down to Market Street established themselves over there. So rents get real cheap at monkey block and that's, and that's the reason the artists come in is that can get a studio they love. If you if you remember maybe the photograph they at a monkey block, the, they had wonderfully tall tall windows painters love that they also love that proximity in North Beach. They love that it was sort of at this intersection of world because you've got North Beach on the one side, and then you've also got Chinatown so yeah it was cheap and and, but it didn't last right so. So it lasted until it didn't. I'd like to introduce Christina Moreta she's our curator from the San Francisco history center in the photo collection. And I'd like to just turn over you Christina to ask Jasmine what came up for you while you watch the presentation. And like I said we put those chat I knew Christina would be throwing down some chats, and there's some great links so I'm going to put that main link in that has everything for you all. Take away Christina. Thanks. Thanks for sharing all that that was really fun. And it's a. I appreciate all the photos you collected for your research. And then, did you use more of photos to inspire you or did you kind of do a lot more reading or just kind of let for your writing process. I'm just curious. Yeah, well as a writer, I think my way into the past or into history are stories so I did start by reading everything I could any historical accounts memoirs biographies, all of that. But I'm writing about photographers so of course I had to study Lang's work for one, the work of these other photographers and then to get that to get that wonderful sort of texture and details photographs are wonderful for evoking the spirit of a place. So I think they were they were really important to me and I found myself. As I was writing, you know, intermittently I'd go back and see myself in the images and let myself be sort of moved and inspired by them and then run back to the keyboard and I try to transmit those feelings, what I was seeing into stories. And that last photo is fantastic. It's just like, of the three of them as photographer. I know it's so wonderful. And you have like the crossover work. Do you do art to just. I don't but I teach at CCA which is an arts college and I I think that the, the germ of this was really teaching at an arts college and learning over time that part of how I was going to connect with the students was to become more knowledgeable about visual art so I don't know I didn't know about photography or painting, but I became increasingly interested and I started to bring more photography into my classes I teach. I teach 20th century American literature and that it just became a wonderful way of making the literature come alive for the students but it also transformed me so that I was becoming. You know, I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means but that's a wonderful thing about being a writer is I think you can, you can, you can become you know knowledgeable about these different fields for a couple of years I lived with this photographer, and I had to know in order to write about her I had to know, I had to know some things about photography and and what it was like to do this work at that time. Looks like we have a couple questions here and one is, would you like to talk about the ratio of fact to fiction in the Bohemian. I love that I wish I had you know a number. There's a point in the novel where Dorothea says about herself and the other main character Caroline may she said she was one part fiction one part fact. I wrote that I was absolutely also talking. Now, is it equal. I follow history, I follow the grain of history so I would never tell a story that went against facts that I knew to be true. So I wouldn't make. I wouldn't make things up I would want if Dorothea Lang were to come back I would want her to recognize herself. She might not like, you know she might not like that I took her out as a subject but you do owe a certain responsibility as a writer of this kind of fiction if you're going to put Lang's name on on the, you know, in the pages and, and you're going to make it explicitly about her I think there is a higher burden, you know, so the place where I invented more though was with respect to that Chinese American assistance so there was an opportunity what I really like to do is find these places where I feel the presence of a story, but there's an absence of the story. So when I come across this reference to Lang's Chinese American assistant, it's just a paragraph in the biography of Lang, but oh my God, you know, was I fascinated and I had to know. Who was this woman, where did she come from, what was their collaboration like that would have been such an interesting meeting of worlds these two women. And that's where I invented more still informed by a lot of research but I think in this case it seemed to it, at least to me it serves a certain higher purpose and that's that you're filling in a gap where history just didn't didn't tell the story. I think you're kind of like touched upon this but if you want to add a little bit about your creative process for researching and writing. But I feel like you touched a little bit upon it but if there is an extra nugget you wanted to add. I mean, everything really for me started with monkey block I just, I was so fascinated and unfortunately you can't write a novel about a building you have to put people in it and you have to make them do so. So I scouted around and I fastened on pretty, pretty early on I fastened on to Lang. She was interesting to me for lots of reasons. So I think the process is really the way I would describe it is, you're using your curiosity as a compass I use my curiosity as a compass I was curious about monkey block I was curious. about monkey block I was curious about this woman who was had polio came over was robbed. There was just so much that captivated me about Lang. And I really, I have learned over the course of three books to trust my curiosity and to let it guide me. There's a fun YouTube question. What, what's the next fabulous woman you're going to write about. There's so many. The next fabulous woman is an actress in old Hollywood. So I'm already on the case. I'm working on it now it is a story set in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s. And I don't think I can disclose her name, but it is absolutely another fabulous woman whose story has to be told. And here's some library and live questions. Which are just kind of like where folks can learn more about these women and more about them, maybe where you did some of your research and found information, and especially the places you found information to build on for the lead character for the lead character. Oakland Museum of California if you're interested in Lang, absolutely go there first. There have been a couple of terrific exhibitions in New York the was a met, put on the woman behind the camera it was all about the new woman so women of the 1920s who went into photography. I'd recommend that book. And then of course scour the index and you know that will lead you to other more precise sources. I think for Lang, the place to go first is the Linda Gordon biography, Dorothy a Lang a life beyond limits, that's where I'd go there's also a terrific PBS documentary about Lang called Dorothy a Lang grab a hunk of lightning. At the end of bohemians, I've got a whole list of suggested materials. Yeah, and they did a great exhibition of and bring men photos at the Reno. Yeah, Art Museum and there's a great catalog for it. Well, I've actually it's behind me so. Oh yeah, yeah, so that was really um so in regards to of course library and resources. We have a lot of the usually the catalogs for those shows too. Um, let's see. And then our earlier question was, and maybe now that you've kind of dropped some of your next project but any parallel movement of female photographers in Los Angeles at that same time. Did you come across that there was a bohemian in Los Angeles and there is. There's actually a book with bohemia in the title about the art scene down there. One of the figures I'm thinking of is Tina Modati, who was associated with Edward Weston they Tina Modati was from San Francisco but she, when when bohemians takes place they're in Los Angeles, and, and this book which, oh my gosh I am blanking on the this book about the bohemian scene down in Los Angeles at the time tells a great story of the artists around that circle. That's funny because I just recently got. It's a Tina Modati book that they used our photos, but it's an Italian. I got that on my desk. Let's see, I think we got most of the questions. And over in the chat, if it if, you know, in regards to writing if you'd like to share some of your daily writing practice that you have. It's tough and I'm not going to say I always follow this advice but I think it's great if you can spend some time every day, even if it's 15 minutes on your project so that you're, you always feel tethered to it in some way. So that can mean for me that I'm just going to set a timer and I'm going to write for 15 minutes, and I really mean it that's all I'm going to do but doing that I think then invites your subconscious to work on it, even when you're not working on it. And, and so, then when you are when you are able to go back and you have more time. There isn't such a struggle to get back into the story. So, keeping up a routine of some kind some connection is important. I think it's great if you have a community or just even a partner or somebody to hold you accountable that's terrific. I think it really has transformed my life. I still exchange the first person who sees my writing is my best friend who I met in a writing workshop 15 years ago. And, and her presence in my life just knowing there's someone who's going to bug me if I'm not writing has been terrific. It's been, you know, life changing really so I'd say yeah that's another thing that's really important. I want to keep up as you all were talking but like Jasmine said and Christina there's many resources out there, especially at our library of course, but in our Bay Area we are so fortunate to have all these great resources. So, this is a live document, and I will put a couple more. Maybe I can talk Christina into throwing in a couple more resources when throw to the chat one last time. One thing about the San Francisco public library is it was an amazing resource. And if you go up to the sixth floor, a kind librarian you I went up and I said show me what you got on monkey block and a magician showed up and gave me a file with all things monkey block so that's us magical. Yep. All right, Jasmine and Christina thank you for making my women's history month even better. This was so good it was such a lovely hour I appreciate it, and appreciate you both joining us and library community. Absolutely appreciate you the most is. All right friends. Thank you so much. Bye bye thank you.