Founded in 2010 by Andrew and Mary Pilara, Pier 24 is a non-profit museum and exhibition space dedicated solely to photography. It’s a massive space in an historic building nestled right below the Bay Bridge, and I have somehow managed to ignore it for the last ten years of living in San Francisco. A terrible mistake. This place is amazing.

Admission is free, by appointment. (Do it. Make an appointment. NOW.) The by-appointment bit makes for an open, airy, and quiet space free of the rather opressive crowds you can run into at other Bay Area museums. Here, you can spend as long as you like contemplating art and stroking your chin thoughtfully. Each appointment lasts two hours, so you can really get in there with that chin-stroking. For reals.

Anywho, earlier this week I headed on down to see Pier 24’s current exhibit The Grain of the Present, featuring ten photographers at the heart of the Pilara Foundation collection – Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hill Becher, Lee Friedlander, Nicholas Nixon, Stephen Shore, Henrey Wessel, and Garry Winograd – plus the work of six contemporary photographers: Eamonn Doyle, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ed Panar, Alec Soth, Awoiska can der Molen, and Vanessa Winship.

Behind the cut, a whole slew of my favorite images from the exhibit.

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