Arnold Genthe

Researching into the depths of disaster photography, i came across Arnold Genthe. I thought this would be relevant for my dvd as this shows just how long disaster photography has been recorded, and also shows that it has also been in the media.

 

He took a well known disaster photograph from that time of an earthquake that happened in San francisco.  Born in Berlin in 1869, then following in his fathers footsteps, Genthe became a classically trained scholar. He is best known for his photo’s of San Francisco chinatown in 1906 of the san francisco earthquake.  Emigrating to San Francisco in 1895 to work as a tutor, he taught himself photography after being intrigue by the chinese section of the city. He started photographing its inhabitants from children to drug addicts. After local magazines published some of his photographs in the late 1890s, he opened a portrait studio. Although in 1906, San Francisco suffered from a earthquake disaster and fire. It destroyed his studio yet he managed to capture the earthquake’s aftermath with this ‘Looking down Sacremento street, San francisco, April 18th 1906…. IS his most famous photograph. This shows that even before our time, disaster photography was considered as crossing the line into sensationalism.