“The Decisive Moment,” an archive of the Bay Area’s social urban history, includes 26 photographs by Ruth-Marion Baruch, John Gutmann, Pirkle Jones, Peter Stackpole, Brett Weston, and Max Yavno. Printed in black and white, these images represent historical turning points. From the construction of the Bay Bridge to Black Panther revolutionaries, they capture what French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called the ‘decisive moment’: a coalescence of the camera’s mechanical or ‘innate honesty’ with the observer's intuitive insight.

(Image credit: Pirkle Jones (1914-2009) “High-rise Construction and Coit Tower from Russian Hill, San Francisco,” 1962, Vintage gelatin silver print, Promised Gift of the Pilara Family Foundation)