The Moraga Club is a serial portrait of my home community, which coalesces around an open garage door at the last block of Moraga Street before the Ramaytush Ohlone homeland meets the Pacific Ocean. It is part of a larger interdisciplinary project called Lunasea, which also includes multiple series of abstract acrylic paintings and social practice. The theme that weaves through it all is about finding psychic balance through connecting with the ocean, lunar rhythms, and community in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, CA

It is composed of film photographs I’ve taken with my medium format film cameras (mainly a Mamiya C220, and occasionally a Mamiya RB67) since March 2017, when I moved across the street on this charmed block. The element of chance involved in capturing these moments echoes the fleeting nature of our precious human life. It was also a portal into this crew: we all regularly interact with analog machines and share a nostalgia for the times before digital screens dominated the collective consciousness.

This portrait matters because it captures what many call “old San Francisco” culture. The garage is a mechanic’s workshop, a practice space for a number of bands, a resting place for a few motorcycles, innumerable skateboards and bicycles, and one vintage car. It also functions as a living room that is open to anyone, even more poignant during the tenuous period when outdoor socializing was beginning to emerge after lockdown in 2020. We organically intersect across class, racial, age, ability, and sexual identity, which is rare in a society that feels increasingly stratified. We often come together around a simple grill and potluck, and sometimes this means feeding folks who would otherwise go without food. We must all feed our primal vessels, and when we do so among others who hold us nonjudgmentally, it feeds a deeper hunger.