Peter Varshavsky

I am a software engineer, aspiring school teacher, and, occasionally, a music photographer. I have a degree in the evocatively ambiguous field of Applied Urban Science and Informatics from NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress and in math from UCLA and SFSU.

In the past 10 years I’ve worked as a data-adjacent backend software engineer at Dropbox, Stability AI, and Enigma Technologies.

In 2009 my father and I co-founded a record label focused on San Francisco’s eclectic music scene. Porto Franco Records released some 30 albums before closing down in 2014.

To promote our artists, I produced a YouTube music channel youtube.com/portofrancorecords. Its 100+ videos share over 4 million views.

I photographed some of the artists who recorded for Porto Franco, as well as some others. One day I'll figure out how to add little media players to each image, until then their portraits and their music will unfortunately be separated by a few clicks.

…and some time before everyone had a phone that shot HD video, I used to do this