The Mission

Dick Evans captures the pulse of life in the Mission District, the San Francisco neighborhood known for its murals and Latin American culture-and more recently for its rapid gentrification. Intimate, colorful images depict a place filled with diverse residents, stately Victorian houses, hand-painted store signs, Carnaval dancers, Dia de los Muertos celebrants, political activists, and its namesake, Mission Dolores (here juxtaposed against portraits of Native people and indigenous cultural objects). Poetry and quotations from Mission residents are interspersed throughout, deepening viewers’ immersion into this community. But at the heart of the book is the Mission’s famous public art: works that depict Latin American culture, resistance to political oppression, passion for environmental justice, and outrage at gentrification. Evans’s photos highlight the growing threat to the neighborhood’s character, but they also reveal the many changes that have shaped the neighborhood into its vivacious present-day identity.