A decade after the announcement of the daguerreotype in 1839, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, and California was granted statehood in 1850. The arrival at Stanford University Libraries of over 500,000 images from the California Historical Society (CHS) is a eureka moment of its own, illustrating the entire history of the state in virtually every photographic medium, including daguerreotypes, salted paper prints, leather pannotypes, and mammoth-plate albumen silver prints.
“Although there are many standout items, one of my favorites is a small daguerreotype of potatoes from around 1855, said Photography Curator Anna Lee. “Daguerreotype still lifes are quite rare, and this is a wonderful example showing the one of the first Californian agricultural commodities to be exported beyond local markets.”
“The CHS photography collections perfectly complement our strengths and recent areas of focus,” added Lee. “CHS photos by Arnold Genthe of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 19th century add historical depth to recently acquired photographic archives of Chinatown in the 20th century by the May’s Photo Studio, Irene Poon, and Charles Wong. Likewise, our existing holdings of work by Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge gain context through CHS rarities such as a unique 1851 whole plate daguerreotype panorama of San Francisco by an unknown photographer and mammoth-plate albumen silver prints by both photographers, including an exquisite five-part panorama of San Francisco by Watkins. The CHS copy of Muybridge’s 1877 folio panorama taken from Nob Hill is even inscribed with ‘Leland Stanford, compliments of Muybridge,’ an example of the nice fit between these two institutional collections.”
Since coming to Stanford in January 2025, CHS photographs have been presented at Asian American Arts Initiative events and at a session for students in the ITALIC ("Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture") residence-based academic program. In classes this quarter, faculty are using the photos taken by J.A. Todd to prove the destructive effects of hydraulic mining in a landmark 1882 legal case that led to one of the nation’s first environmental laws. The diverse CHS collections invite comparison between Todd’s documentary images of natural devastation and the magnificent landscapes of Yosemite by Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams. In the same way, photographs of bountiful fields and orchards can be contrasted with portraits of migrant workers and child laborers.
Elizabeth Kessler, Advanced Lecturer in American Studies, and the students in her Picturing Americans course are studying visual depictions in the CHS collections as a starting point for discussions of history and culture. "The CHS photographs have been a wonderful resource for my introductory seminar on portraiture, photography, and American identity. Students have the opportunity to study an 1850 daguerreotype of miners; late 19th century Certificates of Residence, which were required of Chinese laborers; and a photographic history of Japanese Americans in California. And I'm planning to share more later in the quarter. The CHS materials complement and extend the rich archive of photographic materials housed in Stanford's Special Collections," said Kessler.
The people of California, residing in every one of the state’s 58 counties, are a common focus of the 20th-century prints in the CHS collection. A manuscript ledger compiled by a constable prior to the turn of the century includes photographs of Chinese men and women in Sierra County, while a booklet created in 1911 portrays Japanese American communities in the thriving agriculture and floriculture regions of the Sacramento Valley. There are thousands of posed portraits of both famous and ordinary people, while many others were photographed in everyday life or at historical events.
Another prominent theme is urban development, seen first in the CHS copy of George Robinson Fardon’s Views in California (1856), a variant of his larger San Francisco Album: Photographs of the Most Beautiful Views and Public Buildings of San Francisco, the first published photographic record of an American city. In the early 20th century, Laura Adams Armer photographed people on the streets of San Francisco in unposed moments. In 1932-33, Anton Wagner walked throughout Depression-era Los Angeles and in 1935 published the first photographic study of the sprawling metropolis that he described as appearing to have “no beginning nor end.” After World War II, Minor White began a series called City of Surf to catalog everything in San Francisco from the Embarcadero to the Sunset District. The project was unfinished, but White donated hundreds of its prints and negatives to CHS in 1957, and he is also known for his photos of the Stanford campus.
Several of these major photo collections are now available for research in the Department of Special Collections, while over 23,000 images arranged by general subjects will be ready soon. Work is also underway to transfer previously digitized materials to the Stanford Digital Repository and to digitize more of the rarest and most fragile photographs.
“The preservation skills and technical capabilities of specialists at Stanford University Libraries will make the CHS photographs more widely accessible than ever before,” said Frances Kaplan, Archivist for the CHS Collection at Stanford. “For example, Chris Hacker and Nat Chua at the Libraries’ Cultural Heritage Digitization Lab used an advanced technique, capturing and seamlessly combining eight overlapping images of small tiles of each photograph, to digitize Muybridge’s mammoth prints of Yosemite at an equivalent of about 450 megapixels. Their work greatly benefits researchers and public viewers, who can study online all the fine details in the original photographs.”
This article is the third in a series of quarterly updates about the California Historical Society Collection at Stanford University Libraries. More information can be found on the CHS Collection at Stanford website. Please direct all inquiries to: chscollection@stanford.edu.