Janet Delaney

Janet Delaney (born 1952) is an American photographer and educator based in Berkeley, California. Her books include South of Market, Public Matters (2018), and Red Eye to New York (2021), all published by MACK, and Too Many Products Too Much Pressure (2025) published by Deadbeat Club.

Life and work Born in 1952 in Compton, California, Delaney relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971. She received a BFA with honors from San Francisco State University (1975), and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1981).

Teaching Delaney was a professor at the College of San Mateo from 1980 to 1991. She was a guest professor at Santa Clara University during 1986, 1989, and 1995. She taught at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991, 1994, 1997, 2014, and 2015. From 1998 to 2015, she was an adjunct professor in the Visual Studies department at the University of California, Berkeley.

South of Market Delaney is best known for her series, South of Market, which she began in 1978 when she moved to the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, an area undergoing transition due to gentrification and urban renewal. Using a large format camera and color film, Delaney photographed her neighbors in their places of work, businesses, apartments, and out on the street.

Delaney returned to the South of Market area to photograph the radical changes that had occurred in the decades since she first lived there, several examples of which were published in the catalogue that accompanied the show at the de Young. That year, Delaney featured the work in a solo exhibit at the Euqinom Gallery in San Francisco, from November to December, 2018.

Publications South of Market. London: Mack, 2013. . With texts by Delaney and Erin O'Toole, and interviews conducted by Delaney and Laura Graham. Public Matters. London: Mack, 2018. . Red Eye to New York. London: Mack, 2021. .

Awards 1979, 1982, 1986: grants from the National Endowment for the Arts

Collections

Delaney's work is held in the following permanent collections: Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, CA Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin , Charleroi, Belgium Oakland Museum of California Pilara Foundation, San Francisco San Francisco Museum of Modern Art