Steve Gladstone is one of the most intriguing photographers of his generation. He was a fixture throughout Santa Cruz and the San Francisco Bay Area from 1973 to 1989. Known for his passion to freeze time, he developed a Gonzo style which helped him capture emotional moments from everyday life and shoot some of the most famous musicians of the day, including: B.B. King, John Lennon, Bob Marley and The Rolling Stones. Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson and Diane Arbus, he traveled the world and shot iconic events in history such as, The Last Waltz, Burning Man, the Rainbow Gathering, the Psychedelics Colloquium, and the 1976 Republican National Convention.

Gladstone never owned a digital camera; to him they marked the death of photography. “The End of Pictures” is the phrase he repeatedly scribed on a collection of his favorite photographs. These images were often hand-colored with markers, scrawled on with stories, and redacted with sharpies, transforming them into narrative paintings. Through these images, he explains and relives the journey of capturing the photo, while simultaneously creating a captivating visual language of color and mark-making. It’s at once a statement about the lost art of photography, and a window into three decades of life, synthesized into a poetic epilogue.

Brian Hardin (Steve Gladstone's Best Friend) -   "Steve loved life and lived it with a belief that it was better to burn out than to fade away, and he did just that."  Gladstone unexpectedly died in 2011, at the age of 56, leaving over 40,000 unseen images hidden in his closet.