Chip Scheuer's Show is a Redemptive Journey Through the Underbelly

Self proclaimed "gritty street photographer," Chip Scheuer, just hung his first museum-curated show in Santa Cruz, at Lulu's Octagon, the satellite gallery of the Museum of Art and History on Front Street.

Keeping with the theme of the big red spheres outside of the Octagon, Scheuer selected photographs with either a strong presence of the color red, or a sphere, or both.

But that description is an oversimplification at best: The photos are slices of life and textures shot in San Francisco, from China Town to the Tenderloin, which Scheuer lovingly describes as the "heart of darkness." His subjects include grafittied walls and out-of-focus headlights to tranny hookers, street people, and one street mime. (Click here to preview the some of the photos you'll find at the Octagon.)

They are the first photographs that Scheuer took after retiring from thirty years as a "news hound" in Santa Cruz County and the Bay Area—he shot black and white film and video for The Valley Press, Scotts Valley Banner, the Pajaronian, and channels 35 and 46. He also freelanced for the San Francisco Chronical, The San Francisco Moniter, and the San Jose Mercury among others.

"This was the first time I was actually able to see color and shoot color, so I was stoked," said Scheuer, who paid $95 for a broken Leica camera at an Estate sale (exactly one year after he swore he was done with cameras), and traded it at a camera shop for a brand new $3,500 Leica camera.

Leica cameras are world class cameras made in Germany, and their lenses come the closest to the human eyeball (the perfect lense) that any camera has ever come, and Scheuer was completely aware of how "killer" his new camera was as soon as he got his first prints back.

"I got my first prints back from a drug store where I had taken them to get developed, and that camera was so killer that the prints just knocked me off the sidewalk. I was just blown away," said Scheuer.

At the time, Scheuer was living in San Francisco and working as an investigator at a law firm. After one camera-free year "the wierdest year of my life," Scheuer began to get into the habit of getting up several hours before work, and walking into the Tenderloin to shoot.

"At five or six o’clock in the morning, the sun was just starting to come up, and all of the last stragglers, like the three legged spider variety of predators are still out trying to get their stuff. The real harcore killer predators, I mean they’d already gotten what they’d needed and they’re asleep, but the stragglers were still out there trying to get whatever it was they needed, whether it was drugs, or money, or both," said Scheuer, who would bring $10,000 of camera equipment with him sometimes and not feel threatened. 

"And because I'd already pounded a couple of double espressos and they’d been up all night scrambling for their crack or their cash, or whatever, I was definitely moving  a lot faster than they were. I mean you could almost see the gears turning in their head before they came after you," he said. 

For a photographer whose former career got him shot at during the L.A. Riots, jumped several times, and once chased down a sidewalk with a hammer, the slow-moving junkies lurking in the Tenderloin were hardly a threat. 

"I would go to the newsroom at the end of the day and feel like my cat when it brings me half of a gopher. ‘Here’s another bloody morsel. Pat me on the head, tell me what a good hunter I am.’ You know, as an adrenaline junkie kid that rocked, but as a compassionate adult, forget about it," said Scheuer remembering his days as a photojournalist—days he said he's glad he lived, but days he is very glad are over.

Scheuer calls the show "redemption."

After years of being on the prowel for blood, guts, and "people's worst nightmares," Scheuers Art photography are every bit as eye-catching as blood spilled on pavement, focusing (and defocusing) on the viscerable beauty of the struggle to survive. 

"As a photojournalist, my biggest victories were peoples’ worst nightmares, right? But with art there are no victims, so it feels really good to be able to hang work that people enjoy seeing, rather than stuff they need to see. In a way it’s redemption. Yeah, I’m stoked," said Scheuer.

If you haven't already checked out his photos, click HERE to see some of the prints you'll find at the Octagon.

Chip Scheuer is living in Santa Cruz again, and enjoying shooting for the Santa Cruz Weekly newspaper. He also shoots video and stills for a Monterey Bay Real Estate company. His prints will hang at Lulu's Octagon through the end of May, and they are modestly priced at $165 and $265. The photographer will be from 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. on Friday, April 6, for the First Friday Art Tour. The Octagon is located on Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz, across from Trader Joes.

This on of the events happening tonight for First Friday Art Tour. There is also a party for the opening of the Santa Cruz Film Festival at the Tannery.