A Different Perspective
Fred Lyon-San Francisco Then

By Barbara Ruiz

A feeling, a view, a second frozen in time, that is what Fred Lyon did when he took his collection of old San Francisco. This city has always been full of characters and he could capture them in their interesting environment. He record most of the symbolic and daily life characteristics of the 1940s and 1950s in San Francisco.
His pictures show different types of social classes, jobs, dresses and leisure activities of that time. It is quite impressive to see how the city has changed, all the people that have walked the streets were we walk today. He framed history and moment that we can still see.

In his black and white collection Lyon shows hundreds of views of the city. We can clearly see his style. He shoots from high and low perspectives. If he is shooting the bridge he goes as high as a seagull. When he shoots boys sliding from a hill he’ll shoot them from the very bottom. He really knows how to capture the best and different way of seeing objects, people and landscapes. Most commonly he shoots views that we don’t regularly pay much attention to.

Fred Lyon shoots all sides of San Francisco. He shoots the youth having fun expressed in several pictures like in the one were the boys are sliding down the street. He also shoots the mysterious feeling of San Francisco. Many of the images have this obscure and mystical mood. In some of them he even involves the fogginess of the city that makes the elements in the picture look darker and unknown.

Fred Lyon wanted to shoot San Francisco Then so he couldn’t forget the famous and symbolic points of the city. He shoots them from an interesting perspective. The Golden Gate is always taken from the side where you can see the “M” shape of it but when it comes to Fred’s perspective he shoots it from inside letting the viewer be actually in the Golden Gate. The view of this picture is impressing because it also looks like if he was standing on top of one of the bridge’s towers when he took it.
Fred Lyon is great when catching the mood and the feeling in a picture. After almost 70 years from when Fred took these pictures he now shows them with excitement but with some kind of fear also. It is not easy for anybody to see your life pass by in a photo, see how it was back then when you were young and healthy.

He started when he was 14 years old; he was just back from the navy, the war was over and there were lots of opportunities. He then started working as a teenage assistant at Gabriel Moulin Studio. He ran and walk through the cities with his camera and he says “every were you’d carry your camera, there was something begging you, take my picture, mister, take my picture.” It seems like Fred really enjoys his job and he gets pretty much into the feeling of being a photographer.

Remember also that back then photography was a very difficult thing, not like in present day that a button can do pretty much everything. If he wanted to use flash he had to use the flash powder and if he didn’t like a picture he just took he still got to print it.

Fred’s pictures are also a door to the past. It is amazing how we can get to know a little bit more about history and how the people and culture were back then. Little boys and girls still riding bicycles and playing in the streets. Men and women very decently dressed. Back then people still had some of a conservative way of dressing. Women wore long skirts, hats and they still worried about not showing a lot of skin. Men were very formal with suits, cigars and hats. It is also impressing to see those old cars going on the streets that are know filled with new cars and buses. It is also funny that besides everything has changed and new things were invented San Francisco doesn’t change its essence. We can still see the typical rail buses and the people hanging out of them.

Fred Lyon has shown San Francisco some of its past. Even he made us see different perspectives of the things we see day by day. He is a person that not only sees things but really look at them. Fred Lyon is a photographer full of experience that has seen the city and the people evolve into what it is today. As he has shown us we know that many things and customs can change but what will always remain are the passion and the good work that someone has done.