Wash Castle
$50.00
Photographs by Dave Glass
Essay by Adrian Martinez
Edit & sequencing — Austin Leong & Adrian Martinez
Cover design — Megan Kelso
116 Pages
First Edition of 100
illetante books © 2023
ISBN: 979-8-89121-370-8
Wash Castle is the newest monograph by San Francisco based photographer, Dave Glass. This body of work spans the artist’s professional career as a Bay Area laundromat repairman and owner of Little Hollywood Launderette. Glass has been making photos for most of his life, but when the looming reality of being drafted and deployed to Vietnam disrupted an opportunity to begin apprenticing at a camera shop, his plans took a turn. After a brief spell abroad, Glass moved back home to join the family business with his father and eventually opened his own storefront on Market Street.
Over the years, Glass would continue to make pictures throughout his wanderings and upon receiving the advice of a well-known photographer, he began to document his day-to-day life on the job. Community members from all walks of life began to frequent the launderette until it became apparent that his space had a distinct social component in addition to being a place to do your laundry. These characters could also be found in the many other laundromats that Glass would service on his repair routes. In his encounters, Glass would engage the customers to make a portrait, detail the landscape from out front, or compose a surreptitious scene as the machines would cycle and people would tend to their clothing.
The resulting images presented in this book tell the story of a changing landscape, which very much reflects the reality of life in the city of San Francisco. Glass depicts how the laundromat can be seen as a gathering place for a community of disparate means. To this day, he continues to make photos throughout the city and even services a modest count of residential laundry rooms. Given the right circumstances, Glass might even pop into a laundromat to take stock of the all too familiar scenes. As his hometown continues to change at a rapid pace, these quiet moments serve as a reminder that certain things won’t, and how the spirit of the community is alive and well in the communal sanctuary that is the laundromat.