Night City

Geoffrey Bowman

In the late 1950s and into the 1960s Geoffrey Bowman worked as a nightshift cab driver in San Francisco to support himself and his wife, Mill, while he pursued his art. His interest in the subject was still relatively new, having only taken introductory courses in printmaking beginning in the mid 1950s and graduating with his B.A. in art in 1957. This early lithograph, however, displays his keen eye for atmosphere, capturing the murky solitude of nocturnal urbanity that he likely admired from the driver’s seat as he rushed to and fro.

A main arterial freeway loops up and over the city’s inner housing, grungy in the light cast by twilight filtering through San Francisco’s famous fog. The familiar greens and blues of a seaside city in transition from day to night beckon the viewer to listen for the forlorn horns of cargo ships, the soft rumble of late night cars on pillared flyovers, and the hush that settles over everything, even in the busiest of seasons, when night falls on the California coastline.