Cultural Writing. Art. Photography. The first artist in the 1 Artist 1 Concept series is San Francisco resident Alice Shaw. Her book, PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE ME, involves having herself photographed with friends, family, and other bystanders whom she feels she shares common traits with. Her project is a conceptual act in which Alice, as Director, creates an enlightening scene. It is not about the photographic document as much as it is about the activity of uniting people in a search for identity. She reveals the beauty in our shared connections. In this body of work she has taken the theory that sometimes when we photograph, we are pointing the camera at something we see reflected in ourselves. What she has done is come out from behind the camera and posed for the photographs with a subject she sees mirrored in herself.

Alice Shaw is visiting faculty in the Photography department of SFArt Institute, and received both her BFA and MFA there. Her work, which infuses personal document with humor, is included in such collections as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the di Rosa Foundation. She has practiced photography for over 20 years and she has been a visiting lecturer at UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, California College of the Arts, and San Francisco Art Institute. Her book, People Who Look Like Me, was published in April of 2006. She is a recipient of a 2002 ArtCouncil Award.