San Francisco Street

This photographic base was shot in San Francisco, California

Printed on Fine Art Hahnemühle Hemp Natural Line 290 g/m2.

Each print comes signed and numbered. 

Unframed. With a small white border. Send in a tube.

Print size 90 x 75 cm - Edition of 10

Print size 60 x 50 cm - Edition of 10.

Print size 30 x 25 cm - Edition of 10.
Print size 10,5 x 14,8 cm (DIN A6) - Open Edition.

Between Neon and Nostalgia – A Blurred Moment in the City’s Rhythm.

Thomas Haensgen’s San Francisco Street is the visual equivalent of that awkward feeling when you wave at someone on the street, only to realize it’s a complete stranger who now looks at you suspiciously. It’s not just an image—it’s a playful meditation on perception and the way our eyes filter the chaos of urban life: chaotic, poetic, and laced with a touch of self-irony.

The photograph, intentionally blurred yet full of life, evokes the immediacy of the 1960s street photography movement but rejects clarity with a surrealistic defiance. Haensgen’s approach could be described as “anti-Bresson”: where Henri Cartier-Bresson captured the decisive moment, Haensgen deliberately seeks the moments in between—the gaps where the eye wanders, and the brain hasn’t yet decided what it’s seeing.

The blurred city lights, those red and green neon dots, feel like memories of a night when you’re unsure whether you had too much to drink or if the city itself was slightly intoxicated. They dance on the boundary between familiarity and abstraction, paying homage to artists like Saul Leiter, who also drenched urbanity in a palette of melancholy. Yet Haensgen leans less into melancholy and more into a celebration of modern absurdity—a kind of visual symphony of street noise, captured in the silence of a single frame.

What makes San Francisco Street special is its universal banality: everyone has stared at a traffic light that wouldn’t turn green, wondering if the other people around them are merely extras in a dream. Haensgen elevates these moments to an artistic stage, reminding us that life’s beauty often lies in its imperfections—and in our ability to find a bit of humor within them.