Arnold Genthe's colour transparency of Chinatown on the day of the quake

1906

Arnold Genthe photographed San Francisco on 18 April 1906, the morning the earthquake struck, and this transparency comes from that day's work in and around Chinatown. Genthe had spent a decade photographing the quarter before the fire destroyed it, and his earthquake pictures are among the few made by someone who already knew the streets intimately. The plate is held in the Genthe Collection at the Library of Congress.