Photography genius: George R Lawrence & "The hitherto impossible

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2002 by Petterchak, Janice

In April of 1906 Lawrence was provided a spectacular subject for his gargantuan apparatus-the San Francisco earthquake and ensuing fire that burned out of control for days. Photographers from all over the world quickly arrived in the ruined city, but few of their views encompassed the scope of the disaster. Lawrence, perhaps commissioned by the San Francisco Examiner, began assembling his equipment and then with five assistants boarded a train for California. Six weeks after the devastation, he sent his seventeen kites flying from a ship in San Francisco Bay with a panorama camera dangling beneath them, described by photographic historian Beaumont Newhall:

It was raining, and the cable became wet; the shutter would not obey his command; and for a while it seemed that his bold project was doomed to failure. But the sun suddenly came out, dried the cable, and from an altitude of 2,000 feet the camera recorded a panorama of the entire extent of the ruined city. Bleak, desolate, and more detailed pictures were taken from lower altitudes with landbased kites. The largest of Lawrence's air photographs of the destroyed city measure 48 by 18 3/4 inches. They are contact prints made directly from the mammoth-the largest yet taken from any airborne vehicle.26

"His camera's innate tendency to bend the space it described mattered little here," reported Peter B. Hales, writing on the history of American urban photography, since the streets were chaotic, the buildings in ruins, the topography a jumble of masonry-strewn hills, smoking wreckage, and downed electrical cables. The fact that he could not include all of the city was a moot point, for little of the city remained in recognizable form. His views, in fact, derive much of their effect from the shock his viewers felt when faced with the ruins his panoramas revealed.

Long after the city had grown too large and complex for the panoramist's enclosing and ordering, Lawrence's views succeeded by attempting no such thing; rather they chronicled (and celebrated) the destruction of the city, as if describing Sodom after its punishment.27

Worldwide sales of the "classic" panoramic picture earned Lawrence some $15,000. One print sold for $8,000 and another to railroad magnate E. H. Harriman for $4,500, who used the picture in Southern Pacific Railroad advertising. In addition, newspaper and magazine publishers bought copies at $125 each.28

Lawrence later related the details of an encounter regarding the photograph "with one of England's most eminent scientists, Baron John W. S. Rayleigh."

Lord Rayliegh told me to my face that my San Francisco picture was a fake .... He said he had been to San Francisco so he knew there was no point out over the bay where a camera could be set up to get such an extensive view. I described my kite system and explained how I had elevated the camera almost half-a-mile above the water front, his opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. I pointed out how this had enabled me to get a view reaching from Ferry House to Twin Peaks and from Golden Gate more than ten miles inland.