New Horia Manolache Photo Exhibit Explores Homeless Identities At The Red Vic

New Horia Manolache Photo Exhibit Explores Homeless Identities At The Red VicPhoto: Camden Avery / Hoodline
Camden Avery
Published on April 01, 2015

This week you have a chance to see something unusual to the Upper Haight: a photography exhibit, and one by an award-winning, nationally recognized photographer, no less.

Work from Horia Manolache's exhibition "The Prince And The Pauper" will be available to view and buy at the Red Victorian this Thursday from 7pm to 9:30pm as part of the Upper Haight's First Thursdays. (Don't worry if you can't make it, the work will be available to view and purchase after that, too.)

Photos courtesy Horia Manolache

We took a moment to talk with Manolache about his photography and the project on view at the Red Vic, which pairs dual portraits of homeless people: one as they are seen in their daily lives, and one as they wish to be seen.

Manolache aborted a tech school career to follow photography and ended up, most recently, as a photo portraitist for Forbes magazine. He has already garnered prizes and accolades for his work.

He said "The Prince And The Pauper" is simply a partway point in a project he intends to continue with the portraits, potentially to result in a book.

Asked how he came about the idea for the project, Manolache said it was a result of an interest in documenting the stories and identities of homeless people without wanting to be exploitative.

"I believe in general," he said in an email, "not only in San Francisco, homeless people are a 'handy' subject for photographers who show them in a 'documentary' way but not too often in a meaningful way, or in a way that could help them or make them proud. My ambition with this project was and still is to show them as successful people, considering that success is in general the way we see ourselves or the way we wanted to become."

He said the ideal result of the project was to make people think about the causes of homelessness, and to change how the lives of homeless people are seen.

Asked what continues to surprise him about his subjects, Manolache said, "they are knowledgeable, they are kind ... in a way that's what intrigues me most, how such good people end up sleeping in boxes on a street or in a park."

Manolache's subjects are from all over the city, he said: Market Street, San Bruno Avenue, and even the Haight, where he did a previous photo project in 2014.

As advertised, the Red Vic is donating half the event proceeds to Taking It To The Streets. Horia is giving two thirds of the take from photo sales to the subjects of his portraits.

Catch the photo show this Thursday from 7pm to 9:30pm at the Red Vic (1665 Haight St.).