575 Castro St.

575 Castro St. focuses on the interplay of light and shadow on the walls of the Castro Camera Store, a location for Gus Van Sant’s Oscar-winning feature film Milk. These mundane shots are almost entirely without movement and sound. So quiet; so still. All the better to showcase the range of emotions evoked by Harvey Milk’s words on the soundtrack – an abridged version of the 13-minute-long audio cassette that he recorded in his camera shop on the evening of Friday, November 18, 1977. This was just a few weeks after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors which made him one of the first openly gay public officials to be elected in the United States. The cassette was labelled simply “In-Case” and was intended to be played “in the event of my death by assassination”. The sensibility of 575 Castro St. references the style of the dozens of Super 8 gay short films of the 1970s that passed through Harvey Milk’s hands as they were processed and developed at the Castro Camera Store.