Last spring, Hugo came to the San Francisco Bay Area on a fellowship from the Headlands Center for the Arts. He and his wife, Tamsyn, enrolled their daughter in a day-care program near City Hall. After drop-off on the first day, Tamsyn found herself walking through the nearby Tenderloin. Despite butting up against some of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, the Tenderloin, like Skid Row in Los Angeles, has long been known mostly as a hub of poverty and crime. Prostitution, drugs, and homelessness are ubiquitous. When Tamsyn saw a man shooting up in his neck, she called Hugo, who’s known for his portraits of people in marginalized communities. “You’ve got to come down here,” she told him.
-California Sunday
