Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Aerial photos of a city in ruins

THE YEAR was 1906, and the citizens of San Francisco must have found it a wildly incongruous sight--grown men at child's play in the midst of tragedy. Less than three weeks before, the earth had shaken and the city had burned. . . .

The man in charge, George R. Lawrence, was anything but mad. As soon as news of the disaster had reached Chicago, he made plans to go to San Francisco with his Captive Airship and crew. With the Captive Airship he knew he could take aerial photographs of the prostrate city that no one else in the world could take. . . .


Dr. Simon Baker, professor of photography emeritus from East Carolina University, shows and tells more about these amazing photos and the man behind the camera.

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