Most of the images in Greg Halpern's installation, I'm Afraid I Love You, now on view at SF Camerawork, were made in Buffalo, New York, though, at times, it seemed appropriate to Halpern to use other settings to describe his hometown. The focus of his work, he says, "is less about a city with a declining population and more about a sense of perseverance and resistance-the mysterious fact that this dying city is also a source of life. My interest," he adds, "is in a poetic truth, a truth of impression, more than a factual, documentary truth."

Photographs above by Greg Halpern, from the series I'm Afraid I Love You. Courtesy of the artist.

Having grown up near a declining port city in the Northeast, and now a frequent visitor to a once-bustling ship-building port on Long Island, I was intrigued by the concept. I contacted Halpern by email yesterday to find out more about his project.

Peggy Roalf: How did growing up in Buffalo focus your view towards social issues - if it did?

Greg Halpern: I think it may have been impossible to grow up in Buffalo and not develop an awareness of the social isolation and exclusion caused by a shrinking economy.

There is hardly any evidence in Buffalo today of Bethlehem Steel, once the world's largest steel mill. There's the sense that the town was forsaken by powerful and wealthy forces, by seemingly unstoppable economic and cultural trends. The city's strong backs proved no longer useful to a service- and silicon-oriented economy. The resulting feeling is that the place has been branded with the American stigma of being old -- and not in the quaint or charming sense, but old in the used-up-and-discarded sense. We look for people and places to blame, and so there's the sense (racism is, of course, involved) that the very heart of the city, the inner city, is the source of this rot, while the ever-expanding suburbs are the desperately hopeful setting of a fresh new start.

PR: Do you remember the first time you left Buffalo for a lengthy stay away? And how did returning affect your view of life?

GH: As a child, I was always traveling with my family, always leaving and coming back, and so I think I was constantly aware of the place's unique existence. The leaving and returning always kept my eyes fresh, and my sense that Buffalo was truly special, and worth contemplating.

But the first long stay away from Buffalo was for me when I left to go to college. I went to Harvard, and came back after a semester. I was struck by the place, by it's state, and by how it looked. I was stunned by it visually, in awe, really. My view of the place, and myself, was forever changed.

PR: Please tell our readers what the title, I'm Afraid I Love You, alludes to.

GH: The title is taken from a line of a poem by a good friend of mine, Johnny Duvernoy. I was drawn to the line because in referencing fear and love in the same sentence, it spoke to my interest in those moments where apparently conflicting sensations interacted -- love and violence, or fear and strength.

To me, the title is about apparently conflicting experiences. Or the relationship (of which I am certainly not the first to observe) of love and sex to domination and violence. The photographs, in my mind, are made by a character who is lost in rapture, as if in love, who has let go, and conquered or ascended from his desolate surroundings. The photographs that most interest me are the ones that describe moments of this rapture, when a person or thing seems to defy the gravity of its environment.

SF Camerawork is hosting an opening reception Thursday, July 19, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. The exhibition continues through August 25. Please check the website for details.