Kamper Sweet Kamper: Eric Ruby in conversation with Allie Haeusslein

* RSVP is required, seating will be available on a first come first serve basis. Conversation will begin at 6:30pm, and will be followed a book signing with Eric Ruby.

Join us on Thursday, June 18 at 6:00 PM PDT for a special evening at Leica Store San Francisco!

We’re thrilled to host an artist conversation between artist Eric Ruby and curator Allie Haeusslein. The discussion will center on Ruby’s new exhibition Kamper Sweet Kamper at SFO Museum and his latest publication with Nocturno, Stone Soup, a compelling visual meditation on drought, climate change, and the quiet tensions that define contemporary life in the American West.

From 2015 to 2018, Eric Ruby lived on a farm in Sonoma County, about forty-five miles north of San Francisco, in a small 1960s Forester travel trailer he affectionately called “the Kamper.” What began as a practical relocation for a job in photographer Jim Goldberg’s North Bay studio ultimately became the foundation for a photographic project. Kamper Sweet Kamper offers a glimpse into this rural interlude through Ruby’s carefully observed scenes. Both serendipitous discoveries and deliberately staged vignettes reveal how he used the camera not merely to document his surroundings, but to understand them—to form a relationship with an unfamiliar landscape and those who shared it.

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Where: Leica Store San Francisco, 463 Bush St, San Francisco.

When: Thursday, June 18, 2025, 6:00 – 8:00 PM PDT

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Eric Ruby (American, b. 1987) is a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Ruby’s work explores themes of travel, nomadic living, and the contemporary resonance of counterculture and utopian ideas. His debut monograph, Stone Soup, was published by Nocturno Books in 2025. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and WIRED, among others. To learn more aboutEric Ruby's work, please visit: https://www.ericruby.com

Allie Haeusslein is the Curator of Photography at the SFO Museum, an AAM-accredited museum located within the San Francisco International Airport. Founded in 1980 as the first cultural institution of its kind in an airport, the museum presents a dynamic program of rotating exhibitions on art, history, science, and culture, and maintains a permanent collection of aviation artifacts.

Previously, Haeusslein was a Director at Pier 24 Photography, the largest space dedicated to photography in North America during its fifteen-year run. During her tenure, she contributed to all aspects of the organization’s operations, including exhibitions, publications, and public programs. She conceived and edited Photographers Looking at Photographs: 75 Pictures from the Pilara Foundation Collection (2019).

Her writing has appeared in ART21 Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Foam Magazine, and HOTSHOE, among others. In 2024, she co-edited and contributed an essay to Soft Eyes, published by Deadbeat Club, which expands upon the exhibition of the same name that she curated at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California, in 2022.

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Eric Ruby: Kamper Sweet Kamper
On view: May 23, 2026 – December 6, 2026
SFO Museum, Terminal 3
Gallery 3A (E-Plaza), Departures – Level 2, Pre-Security

To learn more about the exhibition, please visit: https://www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/eric-ruby-kamper-sweet-kamper

Established in 1980 by the San Francisco Airport Commission, ’s mission is to delight, engage, and inspire a global audience with programming on a broad range of subjects; to collect, preserve, interpret, and share the history of commercial aviation; and to enrich the public experience at San Francisco International Airport. The Museum has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 1999 and retains the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport.

SFO Museum operates more than twenty-five sites throughout the Airport terminals, including fourteen galleries that exhibit a rotating schedule of art, history, photography, science, and cultural exhibitions. Among the sites is the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, which houses a permanent collection of more than 160,000 objects related to the history of commercial aviation.

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Images:
Eric Ruby, Kamper Sweet Kamper

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