Born in Houston, Texas, photographer, Steve Jackson, Jr. made his way to San Francisco in 1950 after serving in the Army during World War II. He opened his first studio in 1951 in the Western Addition, also known as The Fillmore.
For more than thirty years he was a popular and well-known photographer, capturing images of San Francisco’s everyday people and the city’s movers and shakers from Nob Hill to The Tenderloin. As a federal government employee during the Vietnam era, he was often assigned to the campuses of San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley to cover anti-war demonstrations while perched on the rooftops of various buildings in order to get a bird’s-eye view.
He was especially proud of his Bop City collection, taken at the famous jazz nightclub starting in 1951 and on into the 1970s. Images from the collection, featuring the architects of jazz and blues includes Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, T-Bone Walker, and a pantheon of the greatest musicians America ever produced.
A portion of Steve Jackson, Jr.’s body of work was exhibited at the Smithsonian’s African-American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, DC.
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