and in the gallery

stories by grandmother never told me


new radical sex photographs
by Mark I Chester

open hours
Sat/Sun Sept 29th-30th   noon-6pm
open during the Folsom St. Fair!
(my studio is right in the middle of the fair route)
plus Sat Oct 6th   noon-6pm
open thru Oct. 28th by appointment

For 30 years, Mark I Chester, a San Francisco gay radical sex photographer, has been documenting the South of Market underground sexual scene. For the last 20 years, he has been opening his studio to the public during the annual Folsom St. Fair weekend with a group show or personal exhibition of sexual art.

"stories my grandmother never told me" is Chester's extraordinary personal new show of radical sex photographs.  "stories" includes 5 series of photographs that focus on gay men, a lesbian, radical sex, intensity, passion, and pain.

We are living lives on the fault line, carefully balanced between health and death, ecstasy and destruction, pleasure and pain. This is a newly constructed dynamic in a world where we live with deadly diseases and have to negotiate our way between what we want to do and what we can allow ourselves to do considering the consequences.  There is a raw honesty to the lives that I am documenting.  This show raises complicated questions about the nature of pleasure and the disturbing times that we live in.

Master Trooper and slave willie (not pictured) engage in
extreme master/slave play

Mark talks about being hiv and having a mental illness
but never losing his sense of humor

Jack and Raelyn - a cutting ritual and reclaiming for Raelyn
after the devastating effects of breast cancer and chemo

Jok - looks beaten up after a blepharoplasty
and after healing with his crisco injector

Daddy Tom and Benj - a story about passion and exchange