Kamper Sweet Kamper: Eric Ruby in conversation with Allie Haeusslein – Event Recap
On Thursday, June 18, we 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.
Signed copies of Stone Soup are now available at Leica Store San Francisco and on our website. Get yours while they last!
Stone Soup brings together Eric Ruby’s photographs from the past decade and presents them collaged on fabrics from his personal collection. The results are a maximalist colorful aesthetic that creates playful and unexpected visual harmonies. The collected textiles feel almost as if they were plucked straight out of a scene depicted in the photographs.
First Edition / 2025
ISBN: 9798992821208
Details: Hardcover , 9 3/4 x 10 1/2 inches
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
