Photographer chases A’s dream
That beautiful image of Dominican-born pitcher Jonathan Joseph — arms open, head titled back, eyes gazing heavenward above a cloud of mystical light — in photographer Tabitha Soren’s compelling new book “Fantasy Life” brings Renaissance painting to mind.
“It’s an ecstasy moment, in the way I have seen it in sculptures. I grew up Catholic, so I’ve lived with those sorts of facial expressions,” says Soren, who made the image using the laborious tintype process developed in the 1850s. Its “ghostly blueish tint” was a fortuitous mistake, resulting from emulsion poured too thickly on the photographic plate.
You can’t tell from the picture — one of 180 “Fantasy Life” images on view at San Francisco City Hall starting July 20 and one of several tintypes — that Joseph was about to catch a pop fly. Soren shot him in 2014 when he was pitching for the Stockton Ports, a minor-league affiliate of the Oakland A’s.
The Berkeley artist and former MTV reporter spent 14 years following 21 players drafted into the A’s farm system in 2002 (her husband, writer Michael Lewis, famously chronicled that 2002 draft class in “Moneyball”). Five of the 21 made it to the majors, among them power hitter Nick Swisher; others played in the minors or left the game, some struggling with bad habits and financial woes.
Joseph wasn’t among that original group, but Soren had to include that picture. The pitcher was disappointed by the portrait because it didn’t show him pitching, she notes, but “it’s my favorite. I won’t sell it.”
Soren wasn’t a baseball fan but saw in the national pastime “metaphors for the striving culture,” the dreams and disappointments, and was interested in how it expressed “the psychology of Americans.”
There’s a potent picture of A’s 2002 first-round draft pick John McCurdy, a promising infielder who never made it to the majors, photographed outside his motel room during spring training 2004. He’s shirtless, hand to head, looking directly into the lens.
“He was not very fond of having his picture taken, and he was not very happy. He wanted to be playing better,” Soren says. “I think you can read all that in the picture. He looks like he’s about to kill me.” For more information, go to www.sfartscommission.org.
Oakland bike tours
The Oakland Museum’s free docent-led bicycle tours of the city, which touch on Oaktown’s historical and architectural highlights, continue July 16, with rides through two neighborhoods: downtown and the Fruitvale district.
Among other fascinating stops on the downtown tour is what was once the site of the First Congregationalist Church where in 1912 former Oakland Mayor and church sexton Roland Snow engaged in a deadly pistol fight with his nemesis Adolph Goldman ,aSan Francisco merchant who served time in San Quentin after shooting Snow in 1904 and went after him again in the church sanctuary eight years later.
Goldman bled to death on the spot (“Death Ends Ten Years’ Bitter Feud,” wrote the San Francisco Call) and Snow died later from bullet and razor wounds.
The Fruitvale tour includes the historic Peralta House built by a son of East Bay pioneer Luis Maria Peralta, who came with the de Anza expedition in 1776; a ride through Jingletown; and a nod to the site of Badger’s Grand Central Park, an amusement park and resort the ship’s captain Thomas Badger opened in 1872 on his estate in Brooklyn, later called East Oakland.
For more information, go to www.museumca.org (to make a reservation, email docentcenter@museumca.org).
Jazz staff
Some fine musicians who just returned from teaching at Jazz Camp West in the woods of La Honda perform this week at Piedmont Piano, among them drummer Akira Tana, who plays Jimmy Smith-style organ jazz Saturday, July 8, with a grooving band from Osaka and singer Kenny Washington.
For Sunday, July 9, trombonist Adam Theis of the stylistically fluid Jazz Mafia and pianist Colin Hogan — both of whom play multiple instruments — join drummer Darian Gray (an associate of organ meister Booker T. Jones )to play mash-ups and originals.
For more information, go to www.piedmontpiano.com.
Janis encore
San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater has extended its hit “A Night with Janis Joplin” for the second and last time, through July 16. Kacee Clanton stars as the uglyduckling outcast from Port Arthur, Texas, who became the pearl of San Francisco’s rock scene.
For more information, go to www.act-sf.org.