Art show 'neighbors' in Silicon Valley
By: Corinne Speckert, The Spartan Daily
Posted: 12/10/08
About 100 pictures of small business owners from Silicon Valley fill the second floor exhibit room of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, as part of a photographic exhibition titled "My Neighbors."
Joe Claus, an SJSU alumnus and exhibitor, photographed small businesses to show that Silicon Valley is not only a technology-based area as some may think, but also one with small businesses.
At the beginning of the exhibit is a quote by Claus on the wall that gives his view of how people perceive Silicon Valley.
"I live in the heart of Silicon Valley - a 10-minute walk from Adobe, an 8-minute drive from Apple's campus, 14 miles from Google headquarters. This is Silicon Valley business, as the world sees it."
Spectators can see endless portraits of people hanging on the wall, including David Anson, the owner of Stonelight Tile Designer Showroom, Josh McGhie of 4th Street Pizza, Vikki Graham of Antique Market, Allen "Hooty" Gibson of Cinnabar and Frank Annino of the Spartan Barber Shop.
Among the photographs is Eddie from Downtown Snack Bar, which reads "out of business" underneath.
Claus said Eddie was being pressured from redevelopment agencies to move his store and it was difficult shooting the business, knowing that its fate wasn't secure.
"I took a photo of the business before and after and even going back and looking at those two photographs and seeing all the surroundings being the same, but his place gone, it's a little saddening," he said.
The exhibit is an ongoing project, he said, and he plans to take pictures of the outside of the businesses and add a text element, in case some of them don't make it.
"I have some questions I want to ask them, and then somehow include it in these exhibitions," he said. "Then if they are feeling pressured by certain organizations they can voice that if they wanted to, and it would make it that much more relevant."
All pictures are in black and white, ranging from 30 inches by 30 inches to 5 inches by 5 inches. Claus said these pictures represent a growing monograph and he arranged them hanging on hooks and wire to appear as if they're floating.
Claus shot all of his photographs with a film camera, he said, because the aging of the pictures through film is like a throwback to older times.
"It's the contrast, too, everyone being so busy in Silicon Valley," he said. "Having to work with film, you have to slow down and kind of nurture it in a way to get an image out of it."
Gebru Gebrekidan, the owner of G G's Barber Shop, which is featured in the exhibit, said he appreciates what Claus has done for the small businesses in the community.
"I was a very small business," he said. "But now I've grown a little bit more. I (moved) to a bigger space, he encouraged me."
Claus said 60 percent of the people he asked to photograph for the exhibit said no because they were skeptical of his intentions, unlike Gebru whose response was the complete opposite.
"When I approached (Gebru), he was just really receiving and really willing to do it," Claus said. "As compared to some of the other ones that thought there was some kind of other agenda there or like I was trying to sell them something."
Nataly Valencia, a sophomore nursing major, said she felt a sense of community among the pictures.
"It's interesting to see how all these small business owners come into one community," she said. "They're all alike. It's a big connection that I see through the pictures, they all connect to one thing, one community."
Claus said he didn't pose the subjects in his photographs because he wanted to capture their personalities and emotions at that moment.
"I basically wanted to take a photograph of what they wanted to give me," he said. "So if they look nervous then that's how I took the photograph, and if they look comfortable that's just kind of how it comes out."
This project began a year ago, Claus said, in an advanced black and white photography class at SJSU, where students photograph what American means to them.
"I thought to be American is the small businesses of our community and then it kind of morphed into comparing those to the big businesses of Silicon Valley," he said. "I feel like the small business owners make up a lot of the character of the community, because there's so many and they offer so many different services."
Claus said he's donating a handmade book to SJSU Special Collections in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, as well as a smaller replica of his exhibit to History San Jose, a nonprofit organization operating both History Park and the Peralta Adobe-Fallon House Historic Site in downtown San Jose.
"It feels really good because that's part of the purpose too of this whole project, is to create an archive of the businesses that are here," he said.
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