In Limbo: The Materialities of San Pablo Ave
by Mishel Tachet
Dorien Massey’s work on place as an entity that is constantly being constituted and has no strict boundaries has been a guiding principle for me throughout this process. A place is not something just out there, nor does it have a fixed identity, but is associated and made up of various actors who have created relationships with it over time. Similarly, the concept of wayfinding, as described by Tim Ingold, helped orient my understanding of what it means to traverse San Pablo Avenue. For Ingold, wayfinding is the unfolding practice of engaging with a particular landscape that is not confined to simple starting and end points. To travel from one space to another is to downplay the very small interactions in between, in which one is affected and affects the various actors one comes across. To wayfind is to constantly negotiate with space and time. For me, this helps encompass the practice of walking along San Pablo Ave that is not simply dictated by where we begin and end, but the small interactions that lead us in various directions along the way–-the glinting of a window that catches my eye, the small shops filled with products from across the world that warrant exploring, the friendly and shy cats that become paramount to greet, and the faces along the way who welcome or steer clear of our lens that attempts to take stills of this world we inhabit.
Walking along San Pablo has revealed a kind of microcosm of both change and steadfastness within the Bay Area. There is an uncanny feeling walking through certain parts of San Pablo, such as Emeryville, where the commercialisation of the street feels hollow and strange. These large, nameless buildings, paired with small shops that are still thriving and store fronts that seem to have been closed down for years creates a kind of emotional whiplash. Walking along the entirety of San Pablo Avenue, I am struck by the various differences that occur even just a few cities over. It is clear that certain cities have taken varying approaches in terms of responding to urbanization, as well as the ongoing impacts of gentrification. Some examples come to mind, such as the kind of flattening factor that Emeryville has taken by pursuing a commercialization and “modern” (and perhaps charmless) aesthetic, whereas we see the city of Pinole actively engage in preserving its “Old Town” aesthetic, even in new builds. There is also a stark difference in cities that are car oriented versus public transit geared, such as Berkeley or Oakland in which coming across people walking along the street is common, whereas in El Cerrito there was noticeably less interaction with walkerbys.
The act of taking a picture often comes with an association of preservation, or perhaps an attempt to capture the true essence of something. However, photography as used in this class, is rather a tool to capture the various relationships between land, place, humans, and more-than-humans that become readily available to us through the act of walking. For myself this was a sensory practice, in which I was attuned to the ways the landscape interacted with me through these sensations, and listening to the land in ways that prompted curiosity and wonder were what I gravitated towards capturing. I took very seriously the kinds of affects that I created with various structures and compositions and leaned into these particular feelings.
I noticed that my initial interests were in the ways that structure existed along the avenue, namely in the ways buildings and homes appeared within the landscape. I was drawn to the materliaties of San Pablo Ave, both human and nonhuman. Through this I began noticing patterns of juxtaposition, in which I was capturing something both vibrant and decaying, cities that existed on multiple spectrums in which boarded up buildings and ambiguous new builds were paralleled with longstanding small business and physical remnants of resilience. I have since been interested in capturing the spirit of that tension that exists in the space, attempting to capture something in limbo. In my final photos I am showcasing the various things we can learn from the material of the built environment itself, such as the state of houses and sidewalks, the level of erosion and wear, or the clean and smooth lines of newer builds.
Photography as a practice was at times difficult for me, as I learned to negotiate between managing the apparatus’ technical mechanics and the specific feeling I wished to capture. At times this was frustrating, as toying with the exposure or fiddling with the zoom felt like an intrusion to the experience. Yet, with all forms of representation we get as close as we possibly can, knowing that representation is not a replacement for the embodied experience. Instead, it creates its own formation, an entirely new materiality that has the ability to affect and be affected.
Overall, San Pablo has left a lasting impression on me. The changes that are occurring within this street are representative of larger histories of gentrification, commercialization, and community resilience. Ultimately, I know that within several years if I walk this street again much of San Pablo will have changed. This makes walking the stretch of San Pablo bittersweet, as only time will reveal what will remain and what will only exist in communal memories and photographs.
Multidirectional Time and Space by Nicole Shkurovich
Upon walking through San Pablo Avenue with a camera, I was impressed with the way photography as a medium for storytelling helped me create a mosaic of something otherwise very linear. Through narrative and sequence, it became possible to alter the shape of a street that generally runs across one axis. Photography allows one to play with scale, time, and rhythms. Drawing from Doreen Massey’s analysis in Travelling Time, "what the simultaneity of space really consists in, then, is absolutely not a surface, a continuous material landscape, but a momentary coexistence of trajectories, a configuration of a multiplicity of histories all in the process of being made.” I have seen this perspective embodied by the photos taken on San Pablo Avenue. While most of them have been taken in landscape, horizontally framed, my tendency is to sequence photos in chronological order. But I have found that there is no linear progression. This street, and each place we stopped at, are compositions of people and how they relate to their surroundings, both visible and invisible. They are also collages of the past, present, and future.
I find that there is tension ingrained in the landscape of San Pablo. The tensions exist both physically and more abstractly. The first of these tensions is between presence and absence. Who inhabits a space? How is the city’s built environment writing certain people in while erasing others? We encountered areas with legacies of racialized housing, gentrification, and intense surveillance and policing. While there is the presence of resistance—in street art and in people occupying public space— there is also a palpable absence. These absent spaces are still visible and marked; they do not simply disappear. In the in-between spaces or ones where something was left behind, one might find the histories of past communities or industries. Alternatively, one might see an absent space as potential for future development. In our city, when speculative real estate and commodification of housing is normalized, it is hard to treat these empty-seeming spaces as worthless. To me, their value is not in the future or intrinsic value, but in the social and ecological past that they represent. Maybe there is a potential for these ambiguous spaces to become something other than property.
Second, there is a tension between the local and the global. This project hones in on one specific geography. There, we might find microtrends: specialized industries, microclimates and rare ecologies, and even tight-knit social networks. First, we learned of Oakland’s history as a site of Black Panther organizing for Black liberation. Later, we encountered the history of Japanese American flower nurseries in El Cerrito. We even came to understand how the East Bay once hosted many wartime industries like explosives and shipping. And yet, with our critical lens, we can zoom out and place these images and trends into the context of the larger region, and even world. Due to colonization, and later globalization, the outside world collapses, and the fragments of it — languages, political systems, aesthetics, economies, immigration— can be picked up along the way.
Lastly, there is tension in the medium of photography itself. The photo freezes the dynamic street. The street has different rhythms. A person walking, biking, driving, taking a train. Imported goods, business transactions. We collapse the multidirectional movements of time and space into a static frame. We also attempt to engage on the interpersonal level with San Pablo, and yet, we might be limited to a relatively public sphere. We might not have always been invited to enter people’s private space, but we most certainly got to enter their personal realms. While a photo might be a snapshot, and seemingly fixed, the sequences and deconstruction of the image pull the image out of its static nature and bring the street back to life. The level of engagement with a place that we capture on our camera makes the work that we do as a class separate from photography and help form our critical geographical eye. While we may never have the definite answers about what we photograph, the camera acts as a launching point to begin interrogating and analyzing what we encounter or seek out.
While there may be tensions, there is also harmony. What photography proposes, then, is a peace with this ambivalence. The city is neither entirely inhospitable, for human and non-human, nor entirely hospitable. There is erasure, and there is resistance. Geographic photography helps one see the world through a more critical lens. It leads to an overwhelming sensation to capture every detail and quality, which may limit us from stepping back and admiring the rhythms of everyday life. When a bird lands on a crumbling roof and the colors all of a sudden find unity, or when the sun hits, painting geometric shapes onto the landscape. For me, the ultimate harmony is in taking this "simultaneous" understanding of San Pablo Avenue. The street that moves across one axis is really more multidirectional than we think: it hosts different timelines, histories, and relationships that weave into each other. We bring the past into the present through active recalling, learning, and listening. The present that we encounter, critique, converse with, and appreciate helps us also reckon and imagine the future. Photography ultimately gives way to imagine time and space in a richer way.
Walking San Pablo Avenue made the car-dependency of the East Bay Area outside of major city centers graphically apparent. I thought much about what level of disconnect this condition brings about and how people compensate for this lack between one other. Along portions of San Pablo where the streets grew wider, I observed to whom space is allotted; how much space cars are allowed to take up compared to pedestrians and what impact this has on one’s experiences depending on your mode of travel. I grew an interest in differing notions of temporality as it’s been a recurring theme in my coursework this semester. I was introduced to Doreen Massey in this class and have been enlightened by her ideas on socio-spatial relations. She writes in Space, Place, and Gender, “Much of life for many people, even in the heart of the First World, still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes.” Time’s perceived value in western rationality originates from how much work you can get done in a certain amount of minutes. When telling people about how I’m taking a class that runs from morning to evening, I am always met with shock and some distress. This I understand, I’d likely react in a similar way, but even when I explain it, their reaction still reads to me as, “why would you do that?” Even in the face of early awakenings and rushing to get to our meeting spot on time, I’ve tried to adapt to thinking from another temporal conception that I learned about–coming from the Akamba people in Kenya and other ethnic groups in Africa–is time being created through experience which deems it incapable of being lost or wasted.
There were many moments along San Pablo I was reminded of home, especially in Richmond. It reminded me a lot of Salinas, where I was born and went to community college. A significant common factor is the two city’s reputations as crime hubs that are also facing recent waves of gentrification, at different levels but nonetheless, and that has an active body of community organizers. On our walks, I felt a constant awareness of our group’s positionality entering spaces as outsiders and for more often than not being welcomed in. I felt more comfortable approaching people I saw something in to identify with and just the same in places I felt a feeling resembling home in.
I am especially interested in scenes that depict traces of humanity. Lawn chairs set up on a strip of grass separating the sidewalk from the street, the gloves of farm caretakers hung up on a clothesline, figures of La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Mexican patron saint of immigrants, Toribio Romo on the dashboard of a car. What I hope to convey is absence being an imprint of leftover life. The term leftover can take a bitter connotation, but I use it to say that these are places to return to again and again. Considering ideas of home and belonging, I set out to make images that feel intimate and undefended. I find that photos with interesting light-shadow relationships and the variation in lighting of my photos as a collection communicate this especially well.
I gathered much from Paccarik Orue’s project centered on Richmond: There Is Nothing Beautiful Around Here. What Orue says about coexistence of realities lended me perspective on different ways to think about human-time/space relationships. Sorrow and beauty, adversity and vibrance, are all here. Their respective persistence fluctuates, one can be more potent than the other at times. Photography has a special way of documenting these aspects in an incredibly blatant manner. Along Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland, I noticed a business front with a banner signaling the building as a soon-to-be new location of the African-American Wholistic Wellness Hub Complex. Right in front of the door was a large foam pad and a jacket presumably placed there by an unhoused person seeking a good night’s rest. I found this incongruity quite jarring to see on explicit display like this, so I felt it was important to include. According to the City of Oakland’s 2017 Downtown Disparity Analysis, 68% of the city’s unhoused population is Black/African-American despite making up just 26% of the general population–in stark contrast to white people being 15% and 39%. Regardless of the identity of the person who set up on these steps, it is evident that these resources are desperately needed.
To give background on the title of my project, I used the camera feature on the Google Translate app to translate the text on a street sign written in Mandarin in one of my photos from Chinatown. My phone had difficulty reading it so it was flipping through a plethora of different attempted translations, one of them being “discount on fate.” I found it very amusing to learn that the actual translation is “Webster Street” and I just hadn’t realized that the sign below this one indicated the same thing but in English. Regardless, Discount on Fate spoke to me as an image of socioeconomic disparity and the obligations it imposes on people, preventing us from the pursuit of passion. But my experiences walking have proven to me that people always find a way in spite of these imperatives. The morning we arrived in Emeryville, I approached a man cleaning a machine part behind Arizmendi Bakery. What caught my attention was his shirt reading, “Fuk Ice” in the style of the brand ICEE’s logo. He immediately complimented my cat DJ shirt and I complimented his. He then informed me that it was his own design and introduced himself by his artist name, Chicano Eyes. I wanted to know more about his work, so he pointed me over to a piece he did on the building across the parking lot that was soon going to be painted over due to new ownership of the building.
Good Bones, a poem by Maggie Smith has rang in my mind through the duration of this semester during our walks. Particularly the final line, “This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.” The making of this project has all been an attempt to refuse a rejection of the world by instead actively embracing it and all of its parts. Additionally, to reconstruct popular politics of encounter via this medium that can feel extractive and instead go forth in the spirit of curiosity and intentional connection. I have progressed to implement these thoughts and practices into my life through meaningful engagement with people and with the environment. To relate locally while thinking globally. In a practical sense, I’ve learned much more about my camera’s manual settings. And even more so, I have granted a deeper understanding of photography as a means of documenting humanity, absence, injustice, love, and conveying stories through stills of that which lives.
Attention to Place by David Atterton
Before this project, San Pablo Avenue was not a place I knew well. My time in the Bay Area had been centered in Berkeley. Oakland and Emeryville and other areas in the bay remained much more distant and undefined in my daily life. San Pablo sat between them, stretching longer than I expected and connecting neighborhoods I had never taken the time to understand, but also nothing had brought me to them. Walking along San Pablo every week forced and encouraged me to slow down and interact with areas I might otherwise have overlooked. Block by block, the street revealed how many different histories, communities, and ways of life exist along a single road. The shifts are constant and sometimes abrupt, and over time San Pablo began to feel like a condensed version of the East Bay itself. Through my photographs I tried to capture fragments of that experience, but here I can explain what the images alone cannot, especially the process of returning, observing, and spending time with a place that only becomes legible through attention and repetition.
In my photos, I began to notice how decades of people who have lived, worked, migrated, and built their lives here overlap in subtle ways. Through taking photos, I met people who had moved to the Bay Area from different parts of the U.S., and those conversations reminded me how many different paths intersect along this street. Even the cars became part of that story. I did not expect to be drawn to them, but I kept noticing how much variety appeared whether it was in food, architecture style, clothing, but there was the feeling of so many different walks of life along this street. These details helped me understand the culture of San Pablo and the identities that move through it every day.
One theme that stayed with me throughout the project was how strongly the street shows the overlap of old and new. Joel introduced the idea of redevelopment early in the semester, and I carried that lens with me during our walks. I looked at places where something else used to stand, such as older hotels, industrial buildings, or former railway lines. Learning about Hercules and Pinole and their dynamite factories helped me see how much the Bay Area has changed over time, but also showing how old systems and jobs that communities relied on and were vital for work are of the same importance. That history shaped the neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods continue to shift as industries rise and disappear. There are parts of San Pablo that feel almost untouched and others that feel like they are quickly being reshaped. Photographing these contrasts helped me understand the street more clearly.
A moment that made this especially real was when our group stopped outside the California Hotel in Oakland. An older man told us what the building used to mean to the community. Hearing him speak about a past that existed before I was even born made me understand that San Pablo holds stories that stretch far beyond what any photograph can show and a history and time that also can be more imaginative than based in reality compared to today.
My personal connection to the street grew during the weeks of walking it. The clearest example of this was stepping into the Mexican supermarket. I went to school in East Los Angeles and had a similar market near my high school, so the space felt familiar as soon as I entered. These markets have a feeling of community that is different from other places. The sound of people shopping, the smell of fresh bread, and the colors of the displays reminded me of the cultural spaces I knew. What stood out most was how genuine the market felt. It was not trying to be an edited or Americanized version of anything. It felt real and rooted in culture. That familiarity helped me see San Pablo as more than businesses and buildings. It became a space where identity is lived every day and a sense of pride through communities keeps their cultural roots alive and strong.
My experience with photography during the project changed a lot. When I have photographed in the past, especially while traveling, I usually had a clear idea of what I wanted to capture before I arrived somewhere. I imagined the images, took them in a short amount of time, and moved on to editing. On San Pablo, I tried to avoid any expectations. That was more difficult than I expected because it forced me to be fully present with what was actually in front of me. I was also learning more about technical aspects of photography through this course. Learning about aperture, shutter speed, and exposure and how to utilize it to our advantage while shooting. Understanding these settings made me better technically, but it also made me realize how easy it is to miss a moment because I am adjusting the camera. The project required patience and a slower pace. I was not only practicing technique. I was learning how to pay attention.
For this semester project I tried to stop whenever something felt interesting, whether it was a storefront, a color, a car, or the light hitting a wall. I tried to think more about timing and light and also if it represented how I felt passing through these streets. I did not interact with as many people as I hoped to, but when I did, I always made sure they were comfortable, and I was caught off guard by how much people embraced getting their photo taken. Another aspect that changed for my photography as the semester went on was utilizing Joel’s feedback about including more elements in a frame. I used to really focus on one main subject, and realizing I did that and trying to not do that as much really changed how I composed my shots. Instead of isolating one subject, I tried to show how different pieces of the street interact.
By the end of the project, I had learned much more about San Pablo, about the Bay Area, and about my own process as a photographer. What I like also gets me excited. Walking the street made me see how history, migration, business, and culture all shape a neighborhood. These layers are visible if you slow down enough to notice them. I saw how communities hold on to their identities even as new developments appear around them. As a photographer, I learned that I enjoy creating sequences of images that form a story instead of relying on a single perfect picture. Walking alone helped me notice more, but the group moments made certain interactions more natural, especially when photographing people. I also learned that hesitation is part of photographing public space. Sometimes I saw someone with a unique presence, but taking the photo felt intrusive. This taught me that photography requires a balance of instinct and respect while also trying to keep it as realistic as possible.
Overall, this project taught me to pay closer attention to the environment around me. It helped me understand the Bay Area beyond the parts of Berkeley I was used to. It pushed me to observe more intentionally and to think about how space, history, and community connect. It also helped me understand the kind of photographer I want to become. Photography is a way for me to learn about a place, but it is also a way to learn about myself. In many ways, this project also changed how I move through any city space. I notice details differently now, whether it is the way light falls on a building or how people interact with the spaces around them. San Pablo taught me that every street holds more stories than what appears at first glance and that understanding a place requires time, patience, and openness. It made me realize that photography is not only about capturing what is visible. It is also about building a relationship with the environment and allowing it to shape the way I see. This project will stay with me because it showed me that even familiar places can become meaningful when you take the time to look closely. It made me want to continue exploring the world with a camera, not to chase perfect images, but to understand the textures, histories, and communities that make each place unique. I also think this experience will influence how I approach future creative projects. Instead of rushing to capture something quickly, I want to give myself the time to learn from a place and let it reveal itself slowly. That mindset feels more honest and more connected to why I enjoy photography in the first place. San Pablo reminded me that the best images often come from patience and curiosity rather than planning. Moving forward, I hope to carry that approach with me, both in my work and in the way I pay attention to the world around me.
Seeing San Pablo: A Journey of Light and Everyday Life
The uniqueness of the San Pablo Avenue is that this is a long street that stretches across multiple cities in the East Bay. For me, San Pablo Avenue is a place that combines various words of emotions, histories, and diverse communities. When I walked on the street, I experienced many different feelings that I never imagined in the past time. Often, I have these mixed feelings of familiarity, strangeness, warmth, calm, including heaviness. There was a time when I experienced the sunset in the area, which created a sense of sacredness that really hit me in the heart. This is an avenue that combines Oakland’s diverse culture with Emeryville’s brightness and Berkeley’s polities liberty and Albany and El Cerrito’s calmness. In this avenue, I can see the history where immigration thrives as well as their struggles, the growth of the industrial combine with traditional, and even the challenge of the inequality that people experience. During our walk, I actually had the chance to observe the environment in which I live so closely, It’s very different from just driving past. My photographs serve as a mirror that provides not only the visual presentation but also the emotional weight behind it. I can vividly recall the story behind each photograph, which means a lot to me.
Just like what William Littmann mentions, “the rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts” (6). Walking on San Pablo Avenue really makes me slow down from the daily busy life, offering an opportunity for me to slow down to observe the items around me. There were many times that I heard about the homeless population from the local news, but seeing them in person, it shocked me in a strong way that really made me want to do something. What shocked me the most was the increasing number of homeless people who lived around the avenues. I knew homelessness was a reality in the Bay Area, but I was not prepared when I saw it. I can’t help to think about how our institutions could better support those individuals who need help.
This class is very interesting, and I have the chance to use a professional camera for the first time. For someone who used to shoot everything with an iPhone, I was overwhelmed when I first picked up my first camera. There are more buttons and functions that I do not recognize. I felt frustrated and did not know how to create a project, which stressed me out at some point. As the class goes on, I start to master some basic skills and really enjoy myself behind the camera. It is amazing how the camera can show so much impact with different frame designs, shooting angles, exposures, etc. Every photo has a story or scene behind it. As I reviewed my previous works, I clearly saw the improvement of my project themes from newbin to more confidence. My journey of photography has heavily impacted me as I have more patience to get to know the environment around me. More importantly, I get to uphold a positive and inclusive way of life, which can be a story embedded behind the scenes, and people are no longer anonymous.
I keep my creative process simple as I try to follow my heart while I walk on the street, make observations, and then capture. I believe the beauty of the creative should be random without fixed steps. My creation varies depending on the people that I meet, the current neighborhood, such as owners who clean their storefronts, activists who pass by, musicians who perform, family with kids who step into the light in the moment. I don’t want to let myself step into a situation where I just shoot some particular item and ignore others, which is not what I want. I believe that every individual is unique in their own way.
When I learn how to take photographs, the first thing I notice is the light. The light decides how the whole street background will look. While I walk, curiosity alone pushes me to the next place. I built a project that keeps its attention on the people and city view. The more I practise, the clearer the theme of my own work becomes.
I enjoy our walk along San Pablo Avenue. The street is chaotic yet quiet, historic yet alive, broken yet beautiful. From the project I learned more than how to use a professional camera. I learned to look at California's urban tangle and at its many kinds of people, one piece after another. I learned to catch the hidden stories inside everyday routines and see what is different around us. I learned how the light changes and how it shapes the moment besides I now trust my own finger to press the shutter without pause. The walk ties me to the people who live here. Photography forces me to walk slowly - it gives me time to look and to link what I value inside myself with what stands in front of me.
Works Cited
Littmann, William. “Walk This Way: Reconsidering Walking for the Study of Cultural Landscapes.” Buildings & Landscapes, vol. 27, no. 1, 2020, pp. 3–16.