PATTERNS AND TONES

Tim Armstrong I was working at Looking Glass  Photo & Camera down on Telegraph Avenue for a year or two while I was going to college. I often brought my twin lens with me to shoot some street scenes while in transit. Sometime I would just stroll all the way down Telegraph, from the UC campus to the border of Oakland where my job was, as I had a lot of friends that worked in shops along the way. It was a time warp for me to spend time in an area that I had known since childhood. My Great Uncle Rick Ratto ran the pawn shop across the street. My Mother and her family had moved from Boston in 1950 and had lived for 35 years in a house a few blocks away on 61st Street in Oakland, a home that held some of my very first memories. The year was 1988, a time when the streets of Berkeley were a mix of people filled with those who had recently been dropped off from the Napa State Hospital , college kids, die hard hippies, homeless folk and local punks. It was a community tha...