CARD NOTES
OAKTOWN POSTCARDS & NOTECARDS
THEMED EDITION NOTECARDS:
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Individual cards highlight “alt-Oakland”—a place as unseen as Oaklanders themselves. They feature the vernacular of the town’s inhabitants, as opposed to the commonplace images of the media, or of civic institutions or business districts. The urban landscapes are at once emerging and short-lived, morphing and metaphorical, ephemeral and poignant. The pictures also hold those manmade artifacts in rigorous compositions with a high priority on color. Each 6-card pack of 5.5-inch by 4.2-inch notecards includes four or more images in a theme. Individual images are also available in bulk quantity as a print-to-order request.
Now On Sale At MARCUS BOOKS
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Oaktown images are available off-the-shelf for the first time, at the amazing Marcus Books, the oldes Black-owned independent bookstore in the country. Prices at Marcus will be honored with sales here on the website. But at Marcus, there is no waiting or shipping to deal with. Drop by and see the store building's full length wall mural while there. (Click below to load full screen preview...)
Oaktown: Houses, Series 1
The Houses series is part of a larger Oakland landscape photography project that brings a fresh lens to an urban environment often misunderstood and carelessly maligned.
The homes that real people create for themselves make the personal resources they prefer into statements in their own vernacular, a local-color aesthetic that defies media stereotypes as well as municipal and commercial narratives. Each house reflects a one-of-a-kind vision and vitality. Together they say "Oaktown."
Oaktown: Treasure Island, Series 1
In 2019, Oakland photographer Malcolm Ryder spent two days wandering around Treasure Island, a naval station originally built in 1942. It was decommissioned and transferred to the city of San Francisco in 1996. There much of it sat, abandoned to the forces of nature and the hands of man. Or taggers and skaters.
Ryder saw this warehouse ruin as a hidden local landmark, one that might be transformed by the frame of his camera into a source of dramatic and abstract pictorial beauty. The Treasure Island series is an expression of photography as art, but with its subject made poignant by the fact that the site was at high risk for demolition. It has since fully disappeared, except for this photographic record.
Holiday Series: Be Mine
For those who love Love, but rue the hallmarkization of February 14, Malcolm Ryder has come up with unsappy Valentine’s Day cards.
Each image was found and framed by the Oakland photographer on the byways of the East Bay. Romance with a touch of grit, passion leavened by wit, hearts rendered not in lace but in metal and paint.
