Decidedly not a morning person, on her first real visit to San Francisco Sylvia Paret was astonished to find that the moist, chilly draft of her Panhandle-facing window caused her to wake unexpectedly early with a smile, as if to a beloved’s whispered sweet nothings. It was a first in the lifetime of a night owl, and the gateway to a love — for the fog, for the landscaping, for the multitude of paths to lose oneself in guided solely by the scent of jasmine or the promise of salt water — that prompted a cross-country move to the City by the Bay and that lasts to this day.
The three photographs in this archive, taken in the Panhandle and the Koret Playground of Golden Gate Park, are part of Paret’s “Once Upon A Time” body of work, in which she playfully toys with the line between fairy tale and cautionary tale.
Sylvia Paret studied photography at the Corcoran School of Art, the International Center for Photography, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, from where she holds an AA degree. Paret also holds a Johns Hopkins University honors BA in natural sciences and French language and literature, and undertook doctoral studies in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania as a National Science Foundation scholar.
