Incline Gallery is proud to present Be Good.... - a solo exhibition by Emmanuel David Blackwell III

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At the center of Be Good… - are images of Candlestick Park. Presented not as nostalgia, but as lived memory, Candlestick functions as a site where collective history and personal experience converge. For many San Franciscans, it represents a shared sense of loss—of place, continuity, and time. The site also holds profound personal significance for Emmanuel: the car accident which would claim the life of his 23-year old brother occurred at the demolished location where Candlestick Park once was built. BE GOOD, is dedicated to his memory.

Together, these photographs consider sports as a cultural constant—one that holds both joy and grief, and the constant battle of impermanence within the visual language of San Francisco.

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Emmanuel David Blackwell III is a born and bred San Francisco–based artist whose photographic practice centers on sports as a lived framework—defined by fleeting moments, emotional highs and lows, victory and defeat, shattered dreams, and the discipline required to practice something until becoming deeply proficient. Be Good… brings together a constellation of images made over the past 15+ years, drawn from Emmanuel’s sustained engagement with San Francisco, its sports culture and the environments that surround it.

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Raised in San Francisco, Emmanuel’s earliest attachments to the city were formed through sports—through summer camp at Kezar, countless recreation centers and playgrounds, and accessibility to gamedays as a youth. In this body of work, sports operate as a portal rather than a subject in isolation, opening onto broader questions of identity, memory, and belonging within a constantly changing city. The photographs move between spectacle and intimacy, capturing moments that exist briefly before dissolving—much like the games themselves.

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