Francisco Garcia's work has been exhibited in a number of venues around the U.S., including the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Brickton Art Center, in Park Ridge, IL; and many galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Eye Galley. Garcia was the first place winner in photography at the 8th Annual National Juried Exhibition "Works on Paper," at the Berkeley Art Center, and was one of the two-featured artists at Koncepts Cultural Gallery's exhibition "Ways of Seeing." His work has been published in numerous publications including San Francisco Magazine, the New York Times, ZYZZYVA, JAZZIZ, Jazz Times, and Crisis Magazine. Most recently, he was a featured artist in the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco's "Vision of Justice" project, commemorating the organization's 90th anniversary.
Garcia has long been involved in jazz photography and his portraits both commissioned and from live performances -- of some of the foremost performers in jazz today, including the late Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Billy Bang, India Cooke, Jon Jang, James Newton, Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, and many others. These portraits make up a work-in-progress called "Darker Than Blue" (a titled inspired by the late Curtis Mayfield's recording, "We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue."
Another major ongoing project is informed by Garcia's experiences as a combat medic during the Viet Nam War, where he received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. Over the past nine years, he has traveled around Viet Nam taking a visual portrait of it's landscapes and people, and is collecting these images in a photographic essay, "To Bear Witness: A Medic's Photographic Journey Back To The Present." In 2005, Garcia was featured on Vietnamese television, where he critiqued the work of a leading Vietnamese photographer, Dinh Minh. His work will soon be featured in Vietnam Pictorial, the leading Vietnamese periodical that provides foreign readers the latest information about Viet Nam. There will be a photo essay of his work, and a profile of his unique artistic journey.
Garcia holds an M.F.A. in Photography from the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow, and a B.A. in Photography and La Raza Studies from San Francisco State University. He currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona as well as in Sai Gon, Viet Nam.
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