South Side: St. Louis 1992-2004
September 7 – 30, 2006
These photographs were taken between 1992 and 2004 on the South Side of St. Louis, a neighborhood wedged between the Mississippi River and the factories of Anheuser-Busch, Ralston-Purina, Monsanto Chemical Company, and other industrial plants, most of which have since vanished from the landscape. Using a Nikon F3 and printing on silver gelatin paper, I worked with the same tools and methods that defined much of twentieth-century street photography.
My visual language was shaped by the influence of mid-century documentarians including Helen Levitt and William Klein. Like them, I was drawn to the spontaneous choreography of childhood. I aimed to document without sentimentality, allowing the resilience and resourcefulness of youth to speak for itself.
The energy and independence of the children carried a raw poetry. In the margins of the industrial heartland, I sought to capture their acrobatic feats, razor-cut tattoos, and toys creatively repurposed from discarded furniture.
The street became a stage for the complex collaborations and collisions of childhood, carried out with hugs, fights, negotiations, and bravado. Looking back, I see the stark contrast of their lives with the supervised schedules and glowing screens that dominate childhood today.
This body of work is possible only because of the generosity and trust of the children and families who welcomed my presence. These images stand as both a record and a tribute to the children, to a way of life, and to a neighborhood that no longer exists in this form.
-Anna Kuperberg
Anna Kuperberg is a portrait and documentary photographer based in San Francisco. She studied photography at Washington University in St. Louis before moving to the Bay Area, where she received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute with a Murphy Scholarship from the San Francisco Foundation. The South Side project was featured in a solo exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum and is held in the collections of the St. Louis Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, and Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Kuperberg currently brings her observational approach to contemporary portraiture for private clients, with the same keen eye for intimacy and spontaneity developed in her street photography.