Art
Q&A: Matt Takaichi’s Sardonic Tech Work Photography
In 2014, East Bay artist Matt Takaichi was taking photos mostly on the street, but he soon started using this process-based approach for a project that would become “Developers,” his recently published first photography book of work from 2015-2020. To make the book, he went to over 50 Bay Area tech conferences, often by sneaking in, and took well over 10,000 photos that captured tech work in sad and funny ways.
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By Zack Haber
In an interview from 2014, East Bay artist Matt Takaichi shied away from claiming he had a special eye for taking photos and instead said his ability to capture compelling images stems from “the extent” he takes to “position” himself for them. At that point, Takaichi was taking photos mostly on the street, but he soon started using this process-based approach for a project that would become “Developers,” his recently published first photography book of work from 2015-2020. To make the book, he went to over 50 Bay Area tech conferences, often by sneaking in, and took well over 10,000 photos that captured tech work in sad and funny ways.
While working on the project, Takaichi became obsessed and had trouble fathoming how it could end. But shelter-in-place hit in March of 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered these in-person events, making it impossible for him to continue photographing them. He then began a year-long editing process and collaborated with Oakland-based book designer Kate Robinson to organize and self-publish “Developers,” selecting about 120 of these photos, most of which appear in black and white. Readers can purchase the book using this link. Takaichi discusses his book in the following interview, which I’ve edited for brevity and clarity.
Zack Haber: Why did you make a book about tech conferences? The book starts out showing protests. Was there anything political you wanted to explore?
Matt Takaichi: I’d been doing street photography for a while before I had the idea for this book. I was on the streets taking photos of people out and about. As I tried to put those photos together and figure out some way they made sense, I started to feel I needed to do a project that was a little more grounded and had some criticism or point to it.
I had the idea to do this project when I was thinking about how my Mom was a meeting planner for a tech company. Her job was to organize tech conferences. When I was living at home with her, there was one event where she hired me to photograph people as they were receiving awards. I remember thinking at the time ‘this is really stupid, this isn’t the type of photography I want to do.’ I was being kind of bratty. Then I thought about that later and I was like, oh, that could have been really interesting if I had approached it a little bit differently.

Photo by Matt Takaichi from his book, Developers, which captures Bay Area tech conferences from 2015-2020 and was released in late 2021.
Around this time too, while living in the Bay Area, I was thinking about the economy here and how much of it is centered around tech. It seemed like a pretty straight shot if I did something around photographing tech, but I was also thinking about how I could bring street photography into that. But I couldn’t just walk into Google and start taking photos of people.
Then I thought about going into tech conferences. I had a sense of them while growing up and walked past them a lot in San Francisco. That’s really the only place tech congregates in a somewhat visible public way. It seemed like the only option where you could do a documentary style street photo type of a tech project and be around people to get their natural reactions. I thought ‘Here’s the biggest target and here’s the only way I can conceive of doing it.’ When I started I don’t think I had a real idea of what I was doing. It was just that concept and wanting to do it in a way that could be critical and funny.

Photo by Matt Takaichi from his book, Developers, which captures Bay Area tech conferences from 2015-2020 and was released in late 2021.
I think especially at the time, 2015, there was a lot of antagonism toward tech. People were blocking Google buses. The anti-techie thing was really proliferating. I wanted to do some photos about how people perceived tech and the power centered around it and the wealth. But then when I was making the photos, I started realizing there was a lot of resentment among the workers, too. People didn’t want to be there. There was a lot of fatigue. As I did more of the project, things started to get really interesting in Bay Area organizing circles. I got really into this group called the Tech Workers Coalition. I thought a lot of their ideas for organizing were really interesting. For them, tech labor organizing should encompass everyone in the industry, not just engineers. There’s people servicing the tech industry, like cooks, and people in all sorts of lower paid positions. To me they all qualify as tech workers. At these events that service work was everywhere. And those workers made it into my book.
Unionizing in tech work was also entering into the popular consciousness more in the Bay Area. It was something I hadn’t really seen before. Now there’s the Alphabet Workers Union at Google, for example. At the same time, being someone who was employed in the industry before, I noticed those types of organizing hadn’t really penetrated the workforce as much as I’d like them to. It wasn’t common and still isn’t.

Photo by Matt Takaichi from his book, Developers, which captures Bay Area tech conferences from 2015-2020 and was released in late 2021.
A lot of political photographs I had were labor protests by service workers that took place right outside the tech conventions. I have one that’s the Marriott strikers and they made flyers that were specific to people attending a tech conference. You see from the images there’s not a whole lot of interest from tech workers to engage with that. That’s what I’ve seen in the tech industry. You have workers who are pretty unhappy and are working long hours. At the same time there’s not really an infrastructure around collective bargaining to make the workplace better. But from my images you can see that there might be a latent desire to do that, if it could surface in a way that was a bit more legible to them. Who knows? There could be something there.
Can you talk a little bit about sneaking into these conferences, and what that felt like?
Takaichi: When I started doing this, I’d had the idea for a while but wasn’t sure how I’d execute it. Then one day I was walking around downtown San Francisco and saw the Moscone Center was having a tech conference. On a whim I was just like, let’s go for it. I walked into the building, went up the escalator, entered with a group of people and the security guard didn’t really register me.
That was the first event I snuck into. The security guard came up to me once and was like, ‘oh, hey, where’s your badge?’ Then I mumbled something incoherent and acted like I knew what I was doing, and he was like ‘oh OK, you’re good.’
Based on that first experience, I realized it wasn’t hard and I could just keep doing that going forward. Soon I stopped impulsively going to tech conferences. Instead, I learned about how they were scheduled and that, for about half of them, I could register and enter in for free. Most of the photos from the book though are from ones I snuck into. Sometimes, I could have paid to go to those events but it would have been like $400, which was way too expensive for me.
Subconsciously I always felt like I shouldn’t be there. I worried a little bit that people would find out I was working on this project. But before long though, I realized it was pretty low stakes. The worst thing that could happen is that I’d have been asked to leave. It wouldn’t have been a big deal.
Of course, I preferred not to get caught. But that never really happened. A lot of people just thought I was an event photographer. That was something I kind of had to learn how to navigate at first. Sometimes someone I wasn’t interacting with at first would be like ‘oh cool, take my photo.’
Eventually I just started telling people exactly what my project was when they asked, that I was working on a documentary series of images you might not normally see at a tech conference that showed how it wasn’t always fun. Almost all of them thought it was a good idea and they were often really cordial with me. One time I saw one of these people at a bar months later and he started going on this long rant about different ways he thought I could make a lot of money from my photos, which I thought was really funny.
I counted about 15 photos in “Developers” where people appear to stare directly at you or into the camera. Most, but not all, of these people look perturbed, annoyed, and perhaps suspicious of what you’re doing. I love these photos. They make me feel both unsettled and fascinated. There’s a taboo being broken here. As a child I remember being told not to stare at strangers. Why break that taboo? What did it feel like taking these photos?
To me these questions get at a lot of larger questions around street photography and what it’s like taking photos of people on the street who may not always know I’m doing that. I really struggled with how I felt about that for a while. I’ve been really into a lot of classic Magnum photographers, people like Josef Koudelka. What I really like about their photos is you’re just getting this slice of reality from 50 or 60 years ago. Everything feels really genuine, like it wasn’t posed.
It’s really hard to do that if someone knows you’re about to take their photo. I think to some extent it’s not cool to take those photos. At the same time, street photography has become part of the art canon. People like Henri Cartier-Bresson are seen as great artists of the 20th century. It’s kind of validated doing this type of photography.
All this is to say I never really figured out a way to navigate doing it. But what I will say about this project, and why I don’t feel as weird about doing it as I did about other street photography, is that there’s something about entering into the space of a tech conference that makes people assume you belong there. It’s different from taking photos on the street. Once you’re in a tech conference, there’s an assumption that everyone there is in a segment of workers basically, where maybe you’re all coming from a university background. And there’s security making sure everyone who goes in fits a profile. Due to that I think people drop their guard down pretty significantly.
Also in tech conferences, tons of people are running around with cameras. Some of them are working to boost their companies. There’s this tacit agreement that people there are being presenters speaking on behalf of a company. They’re there to advertise. On the one hand it’s a private space, but people are really putting themselves out there.
Honestly, in photos I have where someone has a weird facial expression, I wasn’t too sure they were even looking at me. These places were so dense with people. I use a pretty wide-angle lens and have a pretty discrete setup. When people looked a little frustrated sometimes, I would quickly snap my photo, especially because people’s facial expressions change so quickly.
I felt a little bit free from having to be super conscious of how I was being perceived all the time. A huge part of street photography is knowing how you appear to other people, because that’s going to inform how they react to you, which will change how they appear. You can smile at someone in the street and sometimes you’ll get this nice reception from them for a photo. But with this project I felt like I could really just be a fly on the wall. People weren’t paying much attention to me.
Your photos show an absurdity that’s often comical but also has a deep sadness. There’s lots of photos of people clearly stressed and/or exhausted while others show a strange carnivalesque showmanship and excitement. It makes me wonder: What was it like being in that space? What did you learn about these people and what tech work does to them?
When I saw people at the booths kind of doing their whole song and dance, it showed how when you’re employed in these jobs, you have to try to convince people that the company you work for is great. You have to keep inside whatever you feel about working there and just put your best face forward. I think there’s just something inherently conflictual about doing that. Needing to give this really positive facing image of your company really wears you down. You feel like you’re doing something that isn’t reflective of how you really feel and what it’s actually like to work there. Your coworkers are doing the same thing but when you look around it seems like they’re happy.
I don’t think people are happy working 80-hour weeks, which is pretty common in the tech industry. I think a lot of people feel bad about it. I wanted to have a lot of shots of the frontward facing image of what tech looks like and then ones where you kind of take a step back after people are done presenting and the fatigue shows up. People are just sitting on the ground looking exhausted. They’re calling their family and wishing they were there instead.
I think there’s a point in a lot of people’s adult life where you kind of just realize ‘I’m going to have to work and do these things I don’t like to do.’ Especially in this context of where the US is at right now, there’s not a whole lot of ways for most people to have any say as to what their company produces and how they’re managed.
Being in these tech conferences, it really was just like a show of force. You feel like you’re coming into something that’s powerful and disciplining to workers. It’s a little overwhelming realizing what people are up against now.
Activism
Griot Theater Company Presents August Wilson’s Work at Annual Oratorical Featuring Black Authors
The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.
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By Godfrey Lee
Griot Theater Company will present their Fifth Annual Oratorical with August Wilson’s “Half a Century,” at the Belrose on 1415 Fifth Ave., in San Rafael near the San Rafael Public Library.
The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.
Previous performance highlighting essential Black American authors included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry with Langston Hughes.
The play will be performed at 3:00. p.m. on Feb. 20, 21, 22, 27, and 28 at 7:00 p.m., and on Feb. 23 at 3:00 p.m.
For more information, go to griottheatercompany.squarespace.com/productions-v2
Activism
Oakland Community Art Center is Helping Immigrants Heal from Trauma
The programs are catered to youth and adults with programs called “Arts in Schools” and “Arts and Wellness.” Students are encouraged to participate in music, crafts, and dancing. In contrast, adults can join support groups to connect with others and receive mental health resources to alleviate trauma they may have previously experienced.
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By Magaly Muñoz
A local community art center ARTogether is creating a safe place for immigrants and refugees one craft at a time.
After Donald Trump’s first presidential term started in 2017, Leva Zand saw firsthand the impact of discrimination towards immigrants. She wanted to give this community a space to heal through a creative outlet, which prompted her to start ARTogether.
“Folks can come together and do art activities, celebrate their culture, and basically be in a judgmental free environment, no matter what is their immigration status or how well they speak English, when they came to this country, what generation they are,” Zand explained. “The idea was how to use arts and culture for community building and connection between refugees, immigrants themselves and with the broader community.”
Located in downtown Oakland, the space is dedicated partly for galleries and art shows featuring local immigrant artists. The remaining area is a communal studio where ARTogether hosts its regular activities.
Art is used as a therapeutic medium that allows participants to process and express their emotions and experiences and build community with others in the studio, Zand said.
The programs are catered to youth and adults with programs called “Arts in Schools” and “Arts and Wellness.” Students are encouraged to participate in music, crafts, and dancing. In contrast, adults can join support groups to connect with others and receive mental health resources to alleviate trauma they may have previously experienced.
Zand told the Post that a lot of the issues participants come into the program with are related to feeling a lack of support or community after newly arriving to the area from their home countries. While many come from areas where traditional therapy is considered taboo, art lets people of all backgrounds express themselves in a creative form that makes sense to them.
The center can also provide referrals and direct contacts to traditional mental and physical health professionals and legal and social programs for those who need more extensive assistance.
Because of how the organization started, ARTogether has a strong “Stop the Hate” messaging built into its mission. They began promoting advocacy against anti-immigrant and anti-refugee hate across several demographics during the pandemic, even before “Stop the Hate” became officially established.
“We really want to activate this space for the community to get together, to share, to strategize, to see how they can advocate at the local, state and even national level for their rights,” Zand shared.
Anticipating an influx in stress and trauma for residents after the presidential inauguration in January, ARTogether is hosting a community gathering at the end of the month in order to give people the space to express their feelings through crafts.
These gatherings, or “Gather In’s”, will be held monthly, or for as long as funding can sustain them, which Zand said might not be for long.
The organization recently lost one of its grants from the city of Oakland during the major budget cuts earlier this month that slashed funding for arts and culture programs. They were meant to receive a $20,000 grant through the city’s initial contingency budget plan but the money is now gone until Oakland can get their revenue up again.
Zand shared she worries about the state of the country come the new year and where her organization may end up as well if budget restraints continue at the local and state level.
“We are really facing uncertainty. We don’t know what is happening…We don’t know how bad it’s going to be,” she said.
This resource was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library via California Black Media as part of the Stop theHate program. The program is supported by partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to https://www.cavshate.org/
Activism
‘Let’s Glow SF,’ ‘Paints’ Holiday-Themed Light Shows on Landmark Buildings in Downtown San Francisco
The ‘canvases’ for Let’s Glow SF, which began on Dec. 6 and continues through Dec. 13, include 101 California St., Annie Alley, the Crossings at East Cut, the Ferry Building, One Bush Plaza, Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, Salesforce Tower, and the PG&E Substation.
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By Anka Lee, Post Intern
San Francisco has outdone itself again with the return of Let’s Glow SF, an abstract digital art projected brilliantly on various landmark buildings downtown for the holiday season.
Produced by the partnership of Downtown SF Partnership and A3 Visual, SF Glow began in 2021 with the intent to bring life back to downtown after the COVID-19 outbreak left its streets desolate.
Accompanied by different genres of music, the largest holiday projection arts festival in the U.S. is described on its web site as “a stunning journey of light” and “a striking marriage of art and technology …that elevates the city’s art scene.”
The ‘canvases’ for Let’s Glow SF, which began on Dec. 6 and continues through Dec. 13, include 101 California St., Annie Alley, the Crossings at East Cut, the Ferry Building, One Bush Plaza, Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, Salesforce Tower, and the PG&E Substation.
‘Painting’ the light installations onto buildings starts at 5:30 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m.
At the Ferry Building on Dec. 7, the animated light display was by featuring art by Spectre Lab, Maxin10sity, and Ryan Uzilevsky of Light Harvest Studio. Across from the Embarcadero, plastic chairs were put out for front-row seating to the upcoming projection.
Families dressed in matching sweaters chatted animatedly among themselves, couples cuddled up against the bitter wind, and the ringing of the trolley’s distant approach all served to brighten the street. Holiday-special drinks like hot chocolate and themed cocktails were sold and participating eateries like Avotoasty, Barcha Restaurant came together to bring to San Francisco America’s largest annual Christmas projection event.
The eight-day event will close on Dec. 13, with “Glow on Front: A Neon Block Party” from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at 240 Front St.
Ervin, one of the Block by Block Downtown SF Partnership safety workers for the event, said he’s “looking at a record amount this year,” nearing around half a million attendees in total. But that evening, a lively community evolved from the original trickle of people waiting for the art show to start.
Vendors set up displays and sold jewelry, notebooks, and handmade hairbands. Seats filled up as the day’s light faded, the chill of the air increasing with the flow of people. The excitement among the crowd was palpable and contagious. It was a welcome feeling, electrifying the ever-growing holiday cheer.
Chatter quieted and adventurous music blasted from speakers that were behind the seating area. A projection by Spectre Lab shone directly at the Ferry Building, the abstract graphics of candlelight, lanterns, and disco balls ‘dancing’ to the beat of the music that transformed the clock tower into something alive. The illusory animation spun and stretched the tower with enthusiasm—this writer was in awe.
A newcomer to Let’s Glow SF thought it was really cool how it “utilizes space that we have and…adds something new…for us to enjoy.”
One family only learned about the lights show on their way home after arriving by ferry, and “[they’d] seen it on the billboard with all the artists…. It’s a very positive thing for San Francisco after everything that’s gone on [with COVID].”
Attend the Let’s Glow SF projection event today through Dec.13 for free, at any of their eight locations: 101 California St., Annie Alley, the Crossings at East Cut, the Ferry Building, One Bush Plaza, Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, Salesforce Tower, and PG&E Substation. Food and drink are sold at different participating businesses respective to each projection location. For more information, visit downtownsf.org.
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