Creative flow: landscapes of the city’s sewer plant

“Without pride or embarrassment, I can say that I find the rebar and concrete of a construction site every bit as beautiful as fir trees delicately outlined by freshly fallen snow, and the apparent solidity of an office building as lyrical and ephemeral as fog floating over a sunlit ocean,” Citret says.

The beauty in his statement was that he was talking about the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant, commonly known as the sewage treatment plant.

Twenty years later, these construction images are getting their gallery premiere at RayKo Photo Center, a few blocks south of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The photos are mingled among the large-format cameras, 1940s photo booth and photography ephemera that make up RayKo, a unique private photo facility that is free and open to the public.

Called “No Child Left Behind,” the digital color images are by former teacher Victoria Heilweil, who was able to infiltrate, among others, the elementary school where her daughter is a student.