Good 70s explores the tongue-in-cheek, socially engaged work of conceptual artist and photographer Mike Mandel (American, b. 1950), focusing on projects he made during what was, for him, an incredibly productive decade.
This exhibition includes photographs, books, and a film, all made during the same period he was collaborating with his friend, the photographer Larry Sultan. (A retrospective of Sultan’s work, Larry Sultan: Here and Home, which also includes some of the artists' collaborative work, is on view on floor 3 from April 15 to July 23, 2017.)
Some of Mandel's diverse projects from the 1970s include Myself: Timed Exposures (1971), in which he inserts himself into funny and commonplace situations; Seven Never Before Published Portraits of Edward Weston (1974), which reproduces correspondence he initiated with men named Edward Weston; his Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards (1975), featuring subjects such as Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham; and his book SF Giants: An Oral History (1979).