Ron

1 year old

Sunrise from my window

2014

 

San Francisco's summer fog spilling over Twin Peaks, as seen from the rooftop of the Huntington Hotel

2006

 

If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.

Francis Bacon

Francisco (San Francisco)

2007

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

Sam Abell

The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature. 

Ansel Adams

Mazin

2014

San Francisco

1978

Mark Anstendig

circa 1988

Black and White Ball

San Francisco City Hall

2005

A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick Show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco

2016

17 Mile Drive at Carmel By The Sea, California

 

 

Jane Goodall at Dominican University of California

2014

Tule Elk Reserve inside the Point Reyes National Seashore

 

It is no longer sufficient to describe the world of nature. The point is to defend it. 

Edward Abbey

Gavin Newson on Market Street in San Francisco

2017 LGBT Pride Parade

W. H. Auden by Mark Anstendig

Mark Anstendig photography

 

 

Joe Pecora

Author of, The Storied Houses of Alamo Square

2014

Homeless on Market Street in San Francisco

2016

Mixed media collage by R H

1988

 

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Samuel Butler

. . .when the dreamweaver sees it is time to be through, she whispers a dream known only to you . . .

Kittie N. Beletic 

Lou Harrison and Virgil Thomson

Santa Cruz, California

1986

 

In a portrait, you always leave part of yourself behind.

Mary Ellen Mark

2017 LGBT Pride Parade on Market Street in San Francisco

Keith Sklower

2014

 

I often concentrate on the eyes and lips, they are great indicators of mood and feeling, and I find that I can project character into my portraits by bringing the viewer's attention to these areas.

Robert Ryan

The Waterfront Strike 1934

A longshore's strike led by Harry Bridges began May 9, 1934. As vessels arrived they were unable to unload and dropped anchor in the bay. Other unions supported the strike and by July 16, a general strike was underway. Two weeks later both sides agreed to arbitration and the strike ended. The longshoresmen won the right to hire through their own halls.

One tower of the Bay Bridge is shown.

Only the photographer knows the effect he wants... by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.

Bill Brandt

 

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory.

Andre Breton

 

Dreams are manifestations of identities.

Kathy Acker

R H by Kurt Buser

1985

Virgil Thomson by R H

1986

 

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed.

Richard Averdon

 

Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore Area

2015

 

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Paulo Coelho

 

Mixed media collage by R H

1985

Crocker Museum

Sacramento, California

2015

Market Street, San Francisco

2015

Side chapel at Saint Ignatius in San Francisco

Ron

First Communion

1959

Aaron

2005

Curtin call at the end of Girls of the Golden West

The San Francisco Opera House

2017

Dr. Jane Goodall in San Francisco

2013

 

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff

2018 LGBT Pride Parade on Market Street in San Francisco

Grave site in the backyard, of Mark's cat Sadko

2010

 

The American bison, the largest mammal in North America, once roamed the continent in vast herds and helped to shape the ecology of the Great Plains, as well as the history of the United States of America.

Collage by R H, using sketches by Tom Phillips

Market Street in April 1906 after the earthquake and fire

The burned out Phelan Flatiron Building in on the right

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff

2015 LGBT Pride Parade on Market Street in San Francisco

James Balwin by Mark Anstendig

Mark Anstendig photography

 

 

Graphic for T-shirt by R H

2009

Amid countless everyday miracles, I come in contact with something greater than myself and realize I am a part of it. . . I move in wonder through inspiration, reverence, gratitude, interconnectedness, transcendence, and grace.

John Paul Caponigro

 

Phelan Building on Market Street in San Francisco

2016

 

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

Constantin Brancusi 

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Don Marquis

Gertrude Stein sitting for Jo Davidson

1926 photo by Man Ray

 

A homeless man sleeping on the street, atop a steam vent for warmth, across from the San Francisco City Hall

2017 LGBT Pride Parade on Market Street in San Francisco

Mixed media collage by R H

1984

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff

2016 LGBT Pride Parade on Market Street in San Francisco

Tiburon viewed from Belvedere

2019

The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things. 

Hans Christian Andersen

Gavin Newson with his wife and son on Market Street in San Francisco

2014 LGBT Pride Parade

Petaluma California

San Francisco and the Bay Area from the International Space Station

Mixed media collage by R H

circa 1984

 

Jane Goodall at Dominican University of California

2014

Saint Ignatius, San Francisco

2017

Home sweet home during the pandemic

Grove & Webster in San Francisco

January 2021

Left to right 1. no name, 2. Rick Sullivan, 3. Jonelle Birney, 4. Franc D'Ambrosio, 5. Brian Boitano

2006

Miracles happen every day. Not just in remote country villages or at holy sites halfway across the globe, but here, in our own lives.

Deepak Chopra

Valeska Gert by Mark Anstendig

Mark Anstendig photography

 

Sugarloaf Islands, Farallons

30 miles west of San Francisco 1868-1869

A poster announcing passage on a clipper ship, to Gold Rush San Francisco

Bay to Breakers, Alamo Square, Western Addition, San Francisco

2013

2016 San Francisco LGBTQ Pride Parade on Market Street

Aaron

2005

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall unveil. 

James Allen

Mixed media collage by R H

1982

17 Mile Drive at Carmel By The Sea, California

R H

Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado

1969

Stanley Kubrick Show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco

2016

Light is impressionism.

Gae Aulenti

Bernhard

2007

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her grandchildren

2015 LGBT Pride Prade on Market Street in San Francisco

 

Phelan Building on Market Street in San Francisco

 

Michael Smithwick

2014

We live our short spans in the vortex of a miracle, and while we may not be the center of that vortex, it is magic to be anywhere in there.

Robert Genn

San Francisco, April 1906

A firehose line was laid from the State fireboats at the Ferry Building to Fire Engine No.1 and two Oakland fire engines, hidden by smoke, as they attempted to keep the fire at Market and Steuart Streets from spreading.

Bert Eibner

American bison locomotion by Eadweard Muybridge

1877-1878

 

 

I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric! 

John Cleese

Mystery stones located within the Tule Elk Reserve at Point Reyes National Seashore

2013

John Welsh

2014

Wreck of the Viscata

Lands End, San Francisco 1868

Mixed media collage by R H

1988

Funny how we look for miracles in our lives when our life is one big miracle in itself.

Victoria Finlay

 

Valeska Gert by Mark Anstendig

Mark Anstendig photography

We live at the edge of the miraculous.

Henry Miller

Gavin Newson on Market Street in San Francisco

2014 LGBT Pride Parade

Everything is miraculous. It is a miracle that one does not melt in one's bath.

Pablo Picasso

Sunrise from my window

2014

 

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

Gertrude Stein

Self-portrait in a store window reflection on Upper Grant Avenue

North Beach, San Francisco

2007

"The Hill We Climb"

by Amanda Gorman

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade.
We've braved the belly of the beast,
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn't always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken,
but simply unfinished.
We the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes we are far from polished.
Far from pristine.
But that doesn't mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,
but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,
that even as we grieved, we grew,
that even as we hurt, we hoped,
that even as we tired, we tried,
that we'll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat,
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we're to live up to our own time,
then victory won't lie in the blade.
But in all the bridges we've made,
that is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb.
If only we dare.
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it's the past we step into
and how we repair it.
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption
we feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter.
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert,
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was,
but move to what shall be.
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation,
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy,
and change our children's birthright.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west.
We will rise from the windswept northeast,
where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.

The National Youth Poet Laureate read this poem at the Inauguration.

She wrote "The Hill We Climb" after witnessing the siege on the Capitol.