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Alessandro Baccari is pictured at his San Francisco home Feb. 21 with an image from his extensive career as a photographer. An exhibition of his work, “Every Image is a Prayer: Photographic Revelations by Alessandro Baccari,” runs through May at the school’s Blackfriars Gallery, 2301 Vine St., Berkeley. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
Feb. 24, 2020
Christina Gray
Catholic San Francisco
“When I’m photographing I’m the happiest character in the world,” Alessandro Baccari told Catholic San Francisco Feb. 21 on the ground floor library of his West Portal home surrounded by stacks of images from a lifetime behind the lens.
Baccari -- writer, painter, poet, photographer and unofficial ambassador of North Beach where he grew up – was 91 years old and two days away from the opening of his latest photography exhibit at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley.
“Every Image is a Prayer: Photographic Revelations by Alessandro Baccari,” runs through May at the school’s Blackfriars Gallery, 2301 Vine St., Berkeley.
“I literally create prayers with images,” said Baccari, who suffered a series of strokes at 89 that seem to have only barely diminished his imagination and productivity. He’s working on a book, writes poetry daily and is lifting weights so he can get strong enough to accept an invitation to travel to New Zealand to teach photography there.
“In the twilight of my life, I have to have purpose every day,” he said. “I raise myself up from this bed to adore my God and to labor for the salvation of my soul, that’s how I’m thinking.”
Baccari said he literally grew up in the craft under the tutelage of his father, Alessandro Baccari Sr., who made his living as an artist. Famed photographers Edward Weston, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams were among his father’s many illustrious friends who also influenced him as a child.
The best lessons from his father, he said, were less about technique than they were about
God as the source of imagination and creativity.
Baccari recalled a childhood outing with his father to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Afterward the pair went to a promontory point where his father asked his son to tell him what he saw. He said he saw mountains and the ocean, people and dogs, trees and flowers.
“Everything you saw inside the museum is a copy of God’s work,” his father told him. “The master artist is God. Always remember that when you draw, when you paint, when you photograph, you are copying God’s creativity.”
As Baccari described his large portfolio of favorite photographs one-by-one -- portraits, landscapes, still-life, collage -- his prayerful approach is more evident than at first glance.
At its most fundamental his work reflects Baccari’s talent for visual storytelling and his internal gratitude for the “gifts” God gave him.
Creativity is also a “survival skill,” he said, especially in recovery and old age. He doesn’t take it for granted.
Each morning before he rises he writes and recites aloud a daily prayer of thanksgiving:
“Good morning Lord. Thank you for another day of living. Because of you I feel especially blessed. Each day is filled with a purpose, as imagination directs my curiosity and spirituality.”
Baccari has received numerous awards and grants for his photography, as well as the Benemerenti Medal for service to the Catholic Church in 1997 from St. John Paul II. His photography has been shown in galleries around the world.
Asked what makes a good photo from a technical standpoint, Baccari said composition, “sculpting with light,” and the interrelationship of line and design.
The book he’s writing is provisionally entitled, “The Fathers My Father Gave Me” about Weston, novelist and playwright William Saroyan, playwright Eugene O’Neill and others who influenced him.
And then there are the books he has already written; "The Italian Cathedral of the West," about his childhood church, Sts. Peter and Paul, "The History of Fisherman's Wharf," and "The History of Italians in California."
He’s attended the Madonna del Lume Festival in San Francisco every year since he was 6 years old, and to this day acts as the event’s master of ceremonies. The Mass that begins the day is held at the Seaman’s and Fisherman’s Chapel on Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf, which he raised the money to build in the late 1970s.
“What have I done Lord?” Baccari asked. “Am I enough to return to you when you call?”