Ken Graves, 74, known for distinctive street photographs, dies
Ken Graves, a street photographer whose black-and-white images captured all the color of San Francisco in the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, has died suddenly at age 74.
[...] opening Saturday is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which has 21 works by Mr. Graves in its permanent collection.
“It is both funny and a little odd, which is what a lot of Ken’s work was about, at that time,” said Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at SFMOMA.
Mr. Graves had been invited to a preview party for the featured artists at SFMOMA a few weeks ago, but had by then become ill and was unable to attend.
Off the street, Mr. Graves photographed the subcultures of competitive ballroom dancing, school proms, amateur prizefighters and the weird fraternal rituals ordinary men become involved in.
Without telling his parents, he enlisted in the Navy in 1962 and served on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk.
After his release from active duty in 1966, he came home to study at the San Francisco Art Institute on the G.I. Bill.
“I found myself, upon discharge, in a city and at a particular historical moment characterized by rebellion and protest against the dangers implicit in too much authority,” he later said.
Mr. Graves received his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1970 from the art institute and his master of fine arts degree in 1971.
After knocking around as a house painter, he was hired as a professor of art at Penn State University, where he taught undergraduates how to take pictures and then how to turn these pictures into handmade books.
In 1985, Mr. Graves met Lipman, a Czech-born social worker and amateur ballroom dancer.
Mr. Graves also became a collage artist, working in the same quirky themes, pasting together pictures from old magazines and medical books, always about men in unheroic circumstances.
“The work captures intimate, magical moments of unabashed tendernesses amongst the protagonists in the photos,” said Jack Fischer, the gallery owner.