Research branch · camera first
Photographic Breadcrumbs
Surviving photographs. Not proof of a theory. Look at the picture, read what the archive says it is, and compare it with the maps.
The path is a baseline, then documented changes of terrain and street grade, then catastrophic destruction. Reconstruction is not in this first collection. The archival files are not cropped or redrawn.
Some chairs also carry Modern Eyes: a labeled visualization made from that photograph, so the scene is easier to look at. It stays on the same chair. It is not another source, and it is not a separate gallery. The original remains the evidence.
Camera first
World’s Fairs
Official plates and archive links. Not a verdict.
- 06
1906
Market Street after the fire
San Francisco
Modern Eyes attached
A ruined masonry street, tracks in the roadway, a tower at the end of the view. Smoke is still in the air.
- 07
28 May 1906
The burnt district, from kites
San Francisco
A field of destroyed blocks. The waterfront is in the near ground. Streets run through the ruins.
- 08
1906
City Hall in ruins
San Francisco
The dome’s frame is bare. Walls are down. Rubble fills the foreground.
- 14
1871
After the fire
Chicago
A long field of masonry shells, chimneys, and rubble. A street runs through the middle of the ruins.
- 18
7 February 1904
Pratt Street after the fire
Baltimore
A ruined brick street, looking east on Pratt Street. Both halves of the stereograph are on the card. Ice from the firefighting is in the foreground.
- 19
19 April 1904
Front Street after the fire
Toronto
Blocks of masonry shells along a street. A later purple catalog line crosses the lower left of this scan. It is not part of the 1904 exposure. It was left in place rather than painted out.
These 20 are a starting collection, not a numerical limit. Another photograph is another chair.