Steve Smith came to San Francisco to learn photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1966. Close by were cafes, bars, strip joints, bookstores, music spots, Figone's Hardware, Louie's Liquors, good restaurants, cheap restaurants and tourist spots. There was a park, Washington Square. And many small, inexpensive apartments. Smith shared a three room on Taylor for $110. Gasoline was 19 cents a gallon. Only Paul Meinheit had a car, a MiniCooper. Nobody had any money. Tuition was $600. Smith's was covered by the Veterans Administration. It wasn’t difficult to get by. There was food at openings. And probably you knew a waiter or waitress who was good for a meal and maybe more. One could always get a job on the School's maintenance crew. One of the biggest tourist traps was the Spaghetti Factory, where, the owner, Freddie Kuh hung chairs on the ceiling and student photographs on the walls. Nobody went there until 10, after the tourists had cleared out.

Photography was the stepchild of the arts. Since "you have the negative" and could theoretically make hundreds of copies, no one print was worth much. There was no market. Only a handful of schools offered photography and fewer museums and galleries showed it. Smith had no allusions about making it big in photography, although Annie Leibovitz, one of his classmates, did.

For most of its life, photography came through large cameras on a tripod. In the 1960's, Henri Cartier Bresson and then Robert Frank with their 35 mm cameras changed all that. From the inside because their small, instantaneous cameras allowed it, they showed the beauty and pathos of the everyday. One needed only to be ready. In the shot where Smith is standing naked, he has a camera in his hand.

Photography has not changed the world in ways once hoped for. But it has kept alive a passion and a promise that is passed from one person to the other like in this book.