Picturing Community

These images are a visual diary of Elliott Linwood's bicycle rides through San Diego’s Balboa Park. Encompassing landscape, street and other photographic genres, the images document a wide variety of personal, social and cultural expression that the artist encountered on a daily basis over a five year period from 2020 to 2025. The series also depicts a vernacular of the public commons when you consider how and with whom the subjects might be performing, communicating, interacting and ultimately honoring each other. From Quinceañera commemorations, to skateboarders banding together in solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement, school trips, gay pride celebrations, etc., this iconic landmark and landscaped natural site functions as backdrop and platform for diverse forms of civic engagement. During the COVID-19 pandemic when these images were composed, the health, safety and psychological value of being able to occupy an outdoor space on a daily basis became apparent, particularly in places like San Diego, versus some of the seasonal and population density limitations in cities like New York. As a component of an historical archive, fifty images from this body of work have been accepted in 2025 into the Marilyn and Gene Marx Special Collections Center at the San Diego Public Library Main Branch where they are accessible to the public. Selections from this series have also been exhibited at Luxe Gallery in 2024 and City Gallery in 2025 in San Diego, CA.