Deep in the Stencil Archives, a black box of negatives and photographs stand as the first wave of documenting mostly San Franciscan street stencils. Dating from 1997 to the early 2000s, this online archive consists of rescans that are larger than the original "smaller to save space" scans in their respective location-based archives. We always credit Josh MacPhee from Just Seeds with our film-to-digital transition. On a walk through the Mission decades ago, MacPhee snapped away, filling a few data cards, and then running out the batteries, with an early digital camera. Though that seemed limited, snapping many photos as opposed to just 24 or 36, to be developed later, felt more limited. 1000s of photos later, here we are in a world where billions of digital cameras post billions of photos faster than a browser can upload. But for this special stencil archive, remember that the black box of paper pics still exists. And not all have been scanned and placed here yet!
