On 18 April 1906, at 5:12 am, San Francisco was hit by an earthquake that is estimated to have been 8.25 on the Richter scale. The earth shuddered for a full minute and—as chimneys fell, gas pipes burst, and electrical circuits shorted—fires broke out all over the city. These were far more devastating than the quake or its aftershocks. The city’s subterranean water system was so badly damaged that there were few resources with which to fight the flames. The fire department dynamited whole rows of buildings to try and create firebreaks, and created more fires in the process. Several firestorms joined together in one great inferno that blazed for three days; 490 city blocks were razed and over 250,000 people were made homeless. Almost two-thirds of the city was destroyed.
The extent of this devastation was captured in an iconic photograph, San Francisco in Ruins, taken six weeks after the fires burnt out. Shot from 2,000 feet in the air, the 160-degree panoramic image shows a view of the city from Ferry House to Twin Peaks, ten kilometers inland. The signage on the waterfront is clearly visible, and you can make out figures amidst the masonry-strewn ruins. The flattened city looks like a ploughed field, the streets shiny furrows that have thrown up black ridges of charred wreckage. The sun’s rays emerge from behind a cloud over the mouth of the San Francisco bay, sparkling the water with glowing light, almost as if to hint at new beginnings.
The photograph was taken by George R. Lawrence, using what he describes, in an inscription on the enormous 48 x 183⁄4 inch print, as a “Captive Airship.” The image was deemed by many to be a composite fake. Manpowered flight was still in its haphazard infancy (the Wright brothers were granted a patent for their Flyer only six days before Lawrence took his photo), and, though Nadar had shot Paris from a hot air balloon in 1868, the even lighting in Lawrence’s aerial view of San Francisco placed its author under suspicion. The fact that Lawrence claimed to have taken his picture from a boat with a camera that had been fastened to a series of kites did nothing to reassure the skeptics.
Lawrence had a photographic company in Chicago whose slogan was “The hitherto impossible in photography is our specialty.” He had earned the nickname “Flashlight Lawrence” because of his pioneering work with magnesium flares—experimentation that, according to an obituary published in 1939, caused “numerous explosions which burned off his hair, eyebrows, and mustache, and burst his eardrums.” His ingenious solution to these problems was a system that released a canvas bag over the discharged lighting apparatus so as to extinguish any fires and contain the smoke, allowing him to shoot indoor scenes without choking or setting fire to his subjects. He was hired to take panoramas of political conventions, legislative sessions, and festive occasions, to which he gave titles such as “Secretary Taft’s Philippine Party Dinner.”