SF Camerawork, Nonprofit Photo Gallery, to Close After 52 Years
SF Camerawork announced today that it would close after over 50 years in operation. The nonprofit arts space dedicated to contemporary photography was founded in 1974, and has served the Bay Area’s photographic community through exhibitions, publications, critique sessions and events.
The gallery, which moved to Fort Mason Center in 2022, will remain open through Sunday, Aug. 16, 2026, for the final days of its current exhibition, John Chiara’s Bay Panel.
“Despite the determined efforts of our staff, board, artists, donors and supporters to secure a sustainable future, we have reached the difficult conclusion that we can no longer continue operations,” said an email from the board.
The only current staff listed on the nonprofit’s website is a gallery associate.
The email cites rising operating costs, declining public funding and changes to the “philanthropic landscape” that have affected arts organizations across the country. Several other nonprofit arts spaces in San Francisco, including California College of the Arts and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts have announced their closure this year.
SF Camerawork began as Lamkin Camerawork Gallery in Fairfax. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, its founder John Lamkin brought the gallery to San Francisco and sold it to his gallery volunteers for $1. It became a nonprofit in 1977. Photographers like Lew Thomas, Donna-Lee Phillips and Hal Fischer are associated with the gallery’s early days — artists who were expanding understandings of photography as a conceptual tool in the ’70s and ’80s.
Over the past five decades, SF Camerawork has championed photographers who have gone on to prominent careers at crucial early stages. Some of those artists include Allan Sekula, Uta Barth, Todd Hido, Meghann Riepenhoff, Jamil Hellu and many others.
SF Camerawork’s current show is emblematic of the nonprofit’s support for experimental photographic practices. Chiara’s Bay Panel is six separate framed images, all unique positive prints that Chiara makes with the help of enormous hand-built cameras and a flatbed trailer.
Bay Panel was originally commissioned by the Pilara Family Foundation for an exhibition at Pier 24 — another dearly departed free-to-visit photography gallery.
Today’s announcement ended with a bittersweet note of encouragement: “to photographers, those who have devoted their lives to the medium and those just beginning, keep creating. The dialogue that has shaped this community will endure through your vision, your collaborations, and the work yet to come.”