August 1 - October 21, 2016

Artist Reception: Thursday, August 4, 2016, 6pm-8pm

Book Signing and Talk: Friday, August 26, 2016, 6pm-8pm

"San Francisco has always been good to me. It presents its many faces to the eye, and thus to myriad lenses. Isolating the pertinent facets and linking them together is job one for photo storytellers. Somehow this has always seemed obvious and therefore unremarkable to me. But it's the visual feast, The Grand Buffet that continues to wake up the camera. I need another lifetime to document the changes in this magical city."

~ Fred Lyon

The Gallery at Leica Store San Francisco, in collaboration with Peter Fetterman Gallery, is pleased to present the photography of San Francisco native Fred Lyon (b. 1924). Opening August 1, 2016 and running through October 21, 2016, the exhibition will feature some of Lyon’s most iconic images of classic San Francisco.

Fred Lyon, a fourth generation San Franciscan, has accomplished a lot over his seventy-year career with his trusty mechanical film cameras and he continues to explore the medium to this day. Lyon has worked alongside photography greats while creating a name for himself, becoming known as San Francisco’s Brassaï. He got his start at age fourteen as an assistant at Gabriel Moulin Studios and studied under famed landscape photographer Ansel Adams. When asked why he initially wanted to get into photography, he grinned and explained that, “Cameras were cool and I thought it would be a good way to get the girls. Guess how that went?”

After a stint in the Navy as a press photographer, working directly with Roosevelt’s office, he went on to photograph fashion in New York City. After a trip back to the San Francisco Bay Area, he decided to return permanently to the city that holds his heart, and luckily for us, he never left. His professional career spanned decades and his work has been seen in Time, Life, Vogue, and countless other fashion, home and garden magazines.

The photographs in Lyon’s exhibition, consisting of more than forty-five vintage and modern prints, represent work developed during San Francisco’s post-war transformation. At the time, the city was thriving and full of optimism, and one feels this energy in Lyon’s sweeping compositions. His subjects range from children and their elders, to musicians and painters, fishermen and servicemen. Today San Francisco remains a locus of incredible change. And yet, thanks to Lyon’s documentary style and the city’s familiar bridges, fog and cable cars, one discovers that much of San Francisco’s charm remains as captivating as it has ever been.