Arnold Genthe

[Drew Wiley]

There's an interesting piece in the SF Chronicle today about a fundraiser to save Genthe's life work. He is best known for his documentation of the SF 06 earthquake and street scenes of Chinatown prior to its reincarnation as a Faux-architecture tourist magnet. Only a tiny sampling of
his work has been published, and it appears the old nitrate negatives are starting to decompose, endangering both the images itself but obviously posing a fire hazard. They're trying to raise 40K and already have several local museums helping with the funding, but also have
initiated a supplementary "adopt a negative" program to get the whole collection digitally copied while there's still time.

[benrains]

Here's a link to the article-
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/a...os-6205223.php

[Tin Can]

Maybe they should copy with film...

[cowanw]

You'd think San Francisco would pony up for 40 grand. That must be chump change for a city that size.

[Roger Thoms]

Drew, did a little searching but could not find anything about the adopt a negative program. Do you have a link? I'm not a Chronicle subscriber so I don't have access to the article.

Roger

[tgtaylor]

Tomorrow is the 109th anniversary of the great quake of 1906. Here's a link to a collection of large format glass plate negatives that were taken by a local photographer during the earthquake and the aftermath: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...om-6207086.php

Thomas

[dsphotog]

Maybe they should copy with film...

My thoughts exactly!
I'd do it for a lot less than $40k.

[Tin Can]

My thoughts exactly!
I'd do it for a lot less than $40k.

Might last another 100 years also.

[dsphotog]

$40k? They're only scanning 158 negs... That's over $250 per scan!

[Thom Bennett]

Genthe spent some time in New Orleans in the '20's: http://www.knowla.org/entry/581/

According to this article, his pictorialist depiction of New Orleans helped establish it as a city that time forgot.