FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

powerHouse Books, Hamburger Eyes, and SF Camerawork are pleased to celebrate the First Anniversary of the Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter with an exhibition of art from

Hamburger Eyes:
Inside Burgerworld

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 14, 2008
Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter
26 Lilac Street, San Francisco

Hilarious yet scary, hardcore yet charming, the Hamburger Eyes crew put out the illest lil’ photography magazine the world has ever seen. Since the first issue of 30 xeroxed pamphlets was printed in 2002, Hamburger Eyes has become an elegant yet underground periodical combining the documentary approach of National Geographic with the hit-‘em-hard sensibility of a late-night tagger. A pictorial history of both the intimate and iconic moments of everyday life, Hamburger Eyes is a travel journal, a personal diary, and a family album. Inspired by the traditions that began with LIFE magazine and Robert Frank, the magazine revitalizes the sensation of photography as a craft as well as a tool to record and document.

In conjunction with the Spring 2008 release of their first book, Hamburger Eyes: Inside Burgerworld (Miss Rosen Editions/powerHouse Books), the Hamburger Eyes crew will put you through the grinder with a selection of photographs by magazine masterminds Ray Potes, David Potes, Stefan Simikich, and Jason Roberts Dobrin, as well as regular contributors Ted Pushinsky, Ryan Furtado, Patrick Griffin, Boogie, Vic Blue, David Uzzardi, Brian David Stevens, Mark Murrmann, Jai Tanju, Michael Jang, Matt Weber, Uri Korn, and Bill Daniel. Get ready.

Exhibiting Photographers Include:

Ray Potes has been making pictures for the past 20 years. At age 14, he made his first zine and has been doing the same ever since. The author of Hamburger Eyes: Inside Burgerworld (Miss Rosen Editions/powerHouse books, 2008), Potes edits and publishes Hamburger Eyes photo magazine, a magazine inspired by the traditions that began with National Geographic and Life, dedicated to revitalizing the sensation of photography as a craft as well as a tool to record and document.

Dave Potes is emerged in photography; from shooting film for fifteen years, hiding out in darkrooms, working on photo shoots, creating photo zines and books, and sleeping with his Contax under his pillow. Potes has helped Hamburger Eyes photo magazine be what it is today - a B&W photo journal that has reached heights and corners of the publishing and photography world they never thought would accomplish. Potes is based in New York. Visit him here: www.totespotes.com

Stefan Simikich was born at a very young age. He is a founding affiliate of the infamous and dangerous photo gang, Hamburger Eyes. He spends his days climbing scaffolding and fixing broken buildings for money, by night he may be found wandering the streets of San Francisco shooting fotos and kicking it with his squad outside somewhere…

Jason Roberts Dobrin was born in 1977 in Berkley CA. He is a self-taught photographer, painter, and publisher who has exhibited his work internationally. He graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 with a BFA in photography. His work has been shown at Aqua Art, Miami; Diego Felix Gallery, Buenos Aires; New Image Arts, Los Angeles; and various San Francisco galleries including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 111 Minna Gallery, and SFCamerawork. He currently lives and works in San Francisco and Buenos Aires.

Ted Pushinsky lived in foster homes and state-run institutions until he was 14, when he stowed away on a European-bound tramp steamer. While working as a roustabout with a traveling circus he learned the craft of photography from Israelis "Izis" Bidermanas (1911-1980), best known for his photos of French circuses and the streets of Paris. Pushinsky came back to the United States and received a master’s degree in design at the University of California. His photography is dedicated to his mentor, Isiz.

Ryan Furtado, 27, was raised in the wilds of northern California. He picked up a skateboard when he was 13 which, in turn, led him to pick up a camera soon after. He currently resides in San Francisco, CA. His work has appeared in Thrasher, Mother Jones, Vice, and the Pacific News Service.

Patrick Griffin was born and raised in Houston Texas. In 2001 he moved to the Midwest where he first began playing with photography. After about 3 years in Kansas City he moved to the bay area where he started to work with Hamburger Eyes. Around 2005 he started his own zine, Frienemies, of which he put out five issues. After graduating from the California College of Arts in 2007 he moved to New York where he currently lives and works.

Born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia, self-taught photographer Boogie (Vladimir Milivojevich) began documenting rebellion and unrest during the civil war that ravaged his country during the 1990s. Though he never planned to leave his hometown, a capriciously entered green card lottery brought him to the United States in 1998. He settled in Brooklyn where he continued to pursue his dream, while doing odd jobs to survive. In 2003, he started photographing gang life and drug addiction in and around New York's most notorious housing projects. The result was his first book, It's All Good (Miss Rosen Editions/powerHouse Books, 2006). His eponymous second book features a more personal selection from his archives and was published in 2007. Two more books will come out in 2008, one on São Paulo and another on Belgrade. He had solo exhibitions in 2007 in New York, Tokyo and Istanbul, and was presented at the Paris Photo and London Photo festivals. In 2004, he was commissioned by Nike to do the first in a series of ad campaigns, a relationship that continues to this day. His other recent clients include LEE Jeans, Japanese fashion labels Shellac and Nano Universe, as well as Element Skateboards. But his biggest accomplishment was probably becoming a dad to Maya, who was born on September 26, 2007.

Victor J. Blue is a San Francisco-based photojournalist. He has worked in Central America since 2001 concentrating on social conflict in Guatemala, as well as photographing stories in Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras. In the United States he has documented news stories and social issues including Hurricane Katrina and it's legacy in New Orleans, prison overcrowding in California, and the lives of illegal immigrants. His photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Le Monde, San Francisco Chronicle, and on the Discovery Channel. He has shown photographs in solo exhibitions and in group shows at Juice Design, 111 Minna Gallery, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, all in San Francisco.

David Uzzardi’s love for capturing real life through images, albeit the roughness we sometimes shine away from, lead him to a four year stint at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Uzzardi’s photographs capture America in all its glory and candidness. “My photographs of people shopping, waiting, hurting, concentrating, smiling and etc. are all part of my never-ending passion to find harmony between people and their environment,” Uzzardi explains. “This harmony that I strive to illuminate is not always positive. It is sometimes a struggle for harmony, and even a harmony with the unpleasant. Regardless of its degree, this harmony represents an existence, a real life, an emotion. My images seek to emphasize the small details and nuances of people in order to capture something much more elusive and transcendent then what appears to be merely everyday life.”

Brian David Stevens was born in Cambridge, England in 1970. He is a self-taught photographer working on long-term self-assigned projects. Funding for these projects comes from shooting for commercial clients. He is currently half way through a 10-year project shooting veterans of the World War II.

Mark Murrmann recently returned to the Bay Area from Washington, D.C., after a stint as a freelance photojournalist covering Congress. In 2004, Murrmann won an Alexia Foundation grant to study photography in London, where he bailed on classes to cover Ukraine's Orange Revolution. He got into photography taking pictures of bands and that's still mostly what makes him tick—shooting live shows and taking pictures on tour. Street photography, covering politics and shooting overseas gets him juiced too.

Jai Tanju comes from a long line of artists. His late father, Sinan Cemil Tanju and grandfather Haluk Cemil Tanju were both respected painters from Istanbul, Turkey. Born in 1968 in Long Island, New York and raised in San Jose, CA, Tanju started taking pictures at age 25 with a camera his grandfather gave him. He took a photography class at a local community college where he got a D. That was the end of his class instruction, but just the beginning of his love for photography. At the time he was living in downtown San Jose with his two friends, Jason Adams and Tim Brauch who were both pro skateboarders. He then started taking lots of pictures of them and their amazing skateboarding abilities. Slowly, he started to make something off of these pictures and a few years later he was offered a job at Skateboarder magazine where he worked for about four years traveling, skateboarding and taking lots of pictures along the way of his friends, surroundings and other proskaters. He also shot photographs of Horiyoshi III for two books, Bushido: Legacies of Japanese Tattoo, then Tattoos of the Floating Worlds.

While a lifetime of professional work can often taint one's vision, Michael Jang has managed to not only retain his original style and enthusiasm for over three decades, but has also enjoyed success in both the fine art and commercial worlds. His work (which can be seen at www.michaeljang.com) has been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and he is currently represented by Getty Images. He is a California Institute of the Arts graduate and received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Clients include Rolling Stone, Apple, The New York Times, and Paramount to name a few. His work is in the permanent collections of SFMOMA, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland), and the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Matt Weber was born in New York City in 1958 and studied oil painting with Nicolai Abracheff , who was one of Picasso's contemporaries and a noted cubist as well. He attended Music & Art high school, but dropped out to pursue "art" by decorating New York's subways in 1975. A self-taught photographer, Weber’s work has appeared in Popular Photography, Photographica, Daily News, Neon, and many other publications. His photographs have been used by EMI Records for the band, The Fun Lovin' Criminals, as well as by Zoo York for two skateboard lines. He has had a solo exhibitions in New York City, Newport News, VA, Cambridge, MA, and East Hampton, NY, and sold prints at auctions for PPOW and Aperture. Weber’s monograph The Urban Prisoner, was published by Sanctuary Books in 2004.

Uri Korn is a photographer living in Oakland, CA. He studied Photography at SMFA at Tufts University in Boston. His work has been exhibited at Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles; SF Camerawork, SFMOMA Artists Gallery, and Steven Wolf Fine Arts, San Francisco; and the Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR. His work has appeared in Artweek, Concussion, Skateboarder, San Franicsco Chronicle, and Oakland Tribune.

Film and photo tramp Bill Daniel began photographing the emerging punk and skate scene in Texas in the early eighties. Since then he has photographed a variety of American subcultures and landscapes from San Francisco bike messengers in the early 90s to post-Katrina New Orleans. His documentary film Who is Bozo Texino?, a travelogue-based history of hobo graffiti, has screened in over 250 venues worldwide. Currently he is touring in a '65 Chevy van rigged with sails called "Sunset Scavenger.”

Founded in 1974 San Francisco Camerawork encourages emerging and mid-career artists to explore new directions in photography and related media by fostering creative forms of expression that push existing boundaries. Through exhibitions, publications, and educational programs, Camerawork stimulates public dialogue and inquiry about contemporary image-making in the context of current social and aesthetic issues. Camerawork has presented nearly 400 exhibitions in its thirty years of support and services to local, national, and international artists. Additionally, Camerawork has produced many exhibition catalogs and a publication, Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts. Other educational programs and informational services offered are lectures, workshops, conferences, critique sessions, a reference library, the Camerawork Bookstore, and an active internship program.

For more information, please contact
Sara Rosen, Publicity Director
powerHouse Books
37 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Tel: 212-604-9074 x105
Fax: 212-366-5247
email: sara@powerHouseBooks.com