San Francisco in the 1850s: 33 Photographic Views

Originally published in 1856, George Robinson Fardon's San Francisco Album is the earliest existing photographic record of an American city. An unmatched historical document of San Francisco during its years of rapid growth and burgeoning prosperity in the wake of the Gold Rush, the album is aesthetically compelling as well. Fardon (1806-1886) , arrived in San Francisco at age 43. He is credited with introducing the wet collodion photographic process to California and experimented with paper photographs as a means for wide distribution of his pictures.Paperback. 44 pages; 33 b&w photographs; 8 x 11 inches.