The Kings of California

There are three kinds of chess players in this world: casual players, players that want to make money and players that want to win tournaments. In 2007 Tyler Fraser set out to photograph the players that want to make money.

Kings of California is a photography project of the booming chess scenes in San Francisco and Santa Monica. The tables on Market Street in San Francisco have some of the best players in the city. Just a few blocks from the famous Mechanics Institute, chess players gather in flocks to take the casual player's money. On a Saturday, you can find awnings over all the tables, so that if rain began the games could go on. While the tables in San Francisco are in a city environment that can bring cold, fog and rain, Santa Monica Chess Park is right on a California beach. Rain rarely comes to the Los Angeles area and playing too many chess games could leave youwith a pretty bad sun burn. Many Santa Monica chess players have the tan of a movie star.

The chess photographs in this collection show the kind of people that you will run into when playing the street chess circuit. No matter the kind of people playing in the city or on the beach, they all have one thing in common, they want to crush their opponent. From the gentlemen to the homeless, Tyler Fraser works to brings this great community of street chess players to life.

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Tyler Fraser was raised in Orange County, CA and spent five years in San Francisco. He has played chess for nine years and started seriously in 2005. His current (Summer 2010) ranking is 1500 regular and 1460 speed. He is know for his photography project Kings of California, which documents the street chess players in San Francisco and Santa Monica, CA. This work has been shown at La Boheme, a cafe in the mission district of San Francisco and featured on a number of chess and photography websites. All the work is done in black and white and shows the people you will see when playing chess in a California city.

For more information contact Tyler Fraser.