“Okay, now I want you to take a breath. And when you exhale, I want to put your image onto a piece of film.” – Elaine Mayes, The Haight-Ashbury Portraits   Sweet Pam and Commune Group, Clayton Street, September 1, 1968 Viewing Elaine Mayes’ photographs of teens in the late 1960s in Haight-Ashbury, we see the specifics of the era’s youth culture and the Summer of Love. In The Haight-Ashbury Portraits, 1967-1968 during the end days of the Summer of Love, Elaine Mayes took a set of portraits of youth culture in her area. Mayes was a young photographer living in San Francisco during the 1960s. She had photographed the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and, later that year the hippie movement had turned from euphoria to harder drugs, and the Haight had become less of a haven for young people seeking a better way of life than a halfway house for runaway teens. Katrinka Haraden (Trinka), 19, Haight Street, 1968 Mayes asked her subjects “to pose or sit naturally, to look into the camera and project their image onto the film.” It’s not easy. As he photographer Vivian Cherry noted: “As soon as people see a camera, they change, and what you see you lose.” Adrienne Salinger also wanted people to act natural for her camera. She asked American teenagers not to tidy up their bedrooms before she came over to take their portraits. Bill Yates went to where teens hang out at the roller skating rink. And many of us just took snapshots of our friends messing about at home.   (L-R) Shari Maynard 19, Red Pappas 18, Stefanie Wyatt 17, Michael 20, and Sean Herrick 18, gather on Haight Street front steps in August 1968. (Elaine Mayes) “All of these images were spontaneous,” Mayes told AAP. “They happened when I saw them and found them while walking around, wherever they were. They were often sitting on a stoop or I asked them where they wanted to be photographed. And I told them I was doing a book about the Haight and that I wanted to include their portrait. And they all pretty much said yes. So I had them pose the way they were. And I put my Hasselblad in front of them on a tripod because I had to make long exposures. And I had to stop the camera down all the way to F16 or higher in order to have enough depth of field because I wanted everything to be sharp. And then when they were sitting there, or standing, I said, Okay, now I want you to take a breath. And when you exhale, I want to put your image onto a piece of film.”   Dodger-and-Sparky Haight Young Man Against Plywood, Haight Ashbury Katrinka Haraden (Trinka), 19, Haight Street, 1968 Frank French, 16, Panhandle, Haight-Ashbury, 1968 Linda, Straight Theater, 1968 John C. Maynard (JC) in Front of Drugstore Wall, Ashbury Street, 1968 Couple with Child, Golden Gate Park, August 1968 Shenandoah Jordan, Super Adaptoid, Lady Glorious, Matthew, and Steve Culligan in a Convertible, Haight Street, August 13, 1968   Elaine Mayes Talks About Her Work In this video Elaine talks about her work and the time:     Via: Haight Ashbury Portraits 1967-1968 by Elaine Mayes. The post Haight-Ashbury Portraits: Teenagers in The Summer of Love, 1968 appeared first on Flashbak.