"In the residential hotels and shelters in the surrounding neighborhood, individuals often adopt a defensive, solitary posture to face drugs, violence and other threats of their environment. Photography expands their world, offering a vehicle for communicating and establishing community where few such avenues existed."

--Tom Ferentz, Founder and Artistic Director,
Sixth Street Photography Workshop

Under the leadership of founder, Tom Ferentz—artist, teacher and curator, the Sixth Street Photography Workshop has mentored more than 300 students in photojournalism and developing since the workshop began in 1992.

The Workshop is an extraordinary program of high quality artistry, distinguished from similar projects by involving adults and sharing the art and skill of photography with residential hotel residents, homeless people and others living below the poverty line. The Workshop extends benefits into the larger community by revealing the reality of homelessness and hotel life.

The purpose of the workshop is to awaken creative and artistic expression within individuals and to help those who are otherwise un-empowered, develop a voice. Program participants deliver a truth from their points of view. They share their eyes; taking people visually to scary places without putting them in their real danger.

It's good journalism.

The hard-hitting and compelling visual images make people "get it." Their photography and imagery has become a vehicle for analysis and expression, giving workshop participants both an outer voice for their community as well as an inner voice for themselves.

The depth of their portraits assault the commoner’s perceptions by showing things that are so "un-pretty," places so undesirable, and people…human beings functioning, living, in these neglected places. And still, surprisingly, these portraits pull out their subjects' identity, displaying what the subject is most proud of; what thing, despite their circumstances, they found worthwhile—like finding sweet things in piles of shit.

Participants are challenged to communicate the richness of their perceptions and understandings, focusing on the outside world and on themselves, creating a documentary expression for poor and disenfranchised adults.

And it's making a difference.

The workshop has enabled many participants to find stability in their lives; giving them quiet moments, moments to focus on themselves, their families, their lives and where to go from here. In the dark rooms of the South of Market Cultural Center, participants have developed more than just images; in the silence, they begin to develop themselves. Many of our participants have changed their lives after being involved in the workshop, some reuniting with family, while others take on and hold down jobs—accomplishments they never had the courage or clarity to achieve before.

The Sixth Street Photography Workshop has exhibited its work at several locations throughout the City including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 1995. These exhibitions are an important feature for Workshop photojournalists because the exhibitions give them an opportunity to display their work so it can be viewed and appreciated. And appreciated it is.

In the recent past, exhibitions were held in January 2004 at the Southern Exposure Gallery
located at 401 Alabama Street in San Francisco. Other exhibitions sites in 2004 have included City Hall and the San Francisco Public Library. These exhibitions were sponsored by the California Council for Humanity.

You may also view works by the Sixth Street Photography Workshop in its 1997 book, Positively Sixth Street, a published collection of outstanding work by the Sixth Street Photography Workshop which serves as a looking glass into the lives of San Francisco's hotel tenants and the homeless.

The Sixth Street Photography Workshop is a project of TODCO's Inner City Arts Program and funded by organizations such as the San Francisco Arts Commission and the LEF Foundation. The South of Market Cultural Center hosts the Workshop and provides dark room space at no-cost to workshop participants. Additional support and assistance is provided by the the Sixth Street Photography Workshops' Advisory Committee.

By supporting programs like the Sixth Street Photography Project for its hotel residents, TODCO continues its mission to assure that they will always be an integral part of their Neighborhood's future.
To purchase a copy of the book, participate in the Sixth Street Photography Workshop, or for more information, please contact Tom Ferentz at tferentz@yahoo.com
www.sixthstreetphoto.org