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A native of Los Angeles, Mercedes Dorame is a photographer whose work challenges ideas of cultural construction.  Mercedes has shown her work internationally and has recently had her work acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Additionally, she has been featured in publications such as 580 Split and News From Native California. Her experience working on archaeological sites has ha a huge influence on her work.  As a member of the Gabrielino Tongva tribe, Mercedes has been deeply affected by how archaeological excavation requires interaction with objects that have been disconnected from their original meaning and context.

Facing Storms, Mercedes Dorame, 2013

Smoke to Water, Mercedes Dorame, 2013

By Sabrina Oliveros

For the past half year, I’ve been an intern at the Daniel E. Koshland San Francisco History Center (SFHC), which houses a formidable research and archival collection at the San Francisco Public Library. I’ve been assisting a small curatorial team in finding stories from the center’s collections to build an exhibit on the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco. It’s an internship that’s further shown me what curatorial work is and how it can be done—and, more importantly, through one particularly resonant story, why it must be done.

The reading room of the Daniel E. Koshland San Francisco History Center.

By virtue of the SFHC’s location alone, I see a setting where exhibitions can originate and thrive outside of museums. The SFHC is a hybrid of public library, archive, and gallery. With exhibit spaces open to the public at extended hours, free of charge, the SFHC’s…