This double-sided artist’s book documents the art of the street in a down-and-out San Francisco neighborhood known by the artists as “Ick Street.” ocallaghan and Koozer photograph billboards and wall pasted advertisements as well as smaller incongruities: the title “Ick Street” comes from a sidewalk engraving that is missing its first half, the preceding concrete slab having long been removed and replaced. The artists digitally blow out the details of the larger street scenes, reducing them to high-contrast lines gathering around old business signs and American flags. “Ick Street” is a meditation on the traces of a city, the marks left behind by a departing generation.
On the alternate side, “A Demolition” documents the demolition of the GE Grosjean Rice Mill in San Francisco in the spring of 2002. Craig Koozer reflects on the destroyed structure: “I had admired and intended to photograph this crazy building for some time, but the wrecking ball got there first.” Simultaneously a memorial and a caution against procrastination, “A Demolition” speculates on the building’s unseen history as well Koozer’s unmade photographs.