Retro Photo Archive, in collaboration with DUPLEX, presents “Naked Seduction: Elizabeth Sunflower 1970-1972.” This series of photographs, captured between 1970 and 1972 in the burgeoning North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, centers the role of sex workers in propelling the feminist movement from a counterculture ideal to a national conversation. The photographs are divided into unique story lines that weave together to tell a larger narrative: focusing on avante garde exotic dancers and models that were emerging from the underground and normalizing sex in a time when the socially marginalized were misunderstood and less tolerated.
The exhibition is curated by Ricki Blakesberg.
DUPLEX, 17 Essex Street, New York. Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22nd from 4-8pm. Thursday – Sunday 1-6pm and by appointment.
Elizabeth Sunflower (1943 – 2008) was a prolific photojournalist based in San Francisco, CA. She lived and worked out of the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco documenting alternative pop-culture of the 1960s and 70s. Sunflower primarily focused on photographing news and pop culture beginning in the late 1960s and continued actively into the 1990s.