Collections

Photograph Collection

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The Booth Historical Photograph Collection documents the people and the environment of San Diego County from the mountains and the desert to downtown and the beaches. Images from late-19th and 20th century photographers illustrate how the arrival of diverse cultures changed the face of the landscape, show the uses of water in an arid climate, Native American culture, border relationships with Mexico, air and automobile transportation, suburbanization, agriculture, recreation, and more.

Dating back to San Diego's infancy, the collection tracks the expansion of the West, the development of the San Diego area, the geographical formations of the region and the connections between San Diego and Baja California. This collection of images is large enough to illustrate thousands of books and diverse enough to contain a specific photograph of an obscure building torn down before World War I.

The nucleus of this collection is represented by the prints and negatives of several commercial photographers who worked in San Diego from 1870 through 1940. Much of the work of these three early photographers was purchased by the Union Title & Trust Insurance Company in 1945. In the following three decades, the collection grew under the guidance of curators Larry and Jane Booth to well over 150,000 images. In 1979, the collection was transferred to the San Diego Historical Society. During the 1980s and 1990s the collection expanded rapidly with the work of several prolific 20th century photographers, and the addition of the negatives from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Collection contains not just photographic negatives, transparencies and prints, but also daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, albumen prints, cyanotypes, glass-plate negatives, carte de visites, cabinet cards, stereocards, panoramic prints and negatives, autochromes, motion picture film and video, and many other processes and mediums which illustrate the development of photography itself. The Booth Historical Photograph Collection continues to grow as professional photographers and amateurs alike donate their work.

Above image:
Santa Fe Depot with train and streetcar, c.1920 #4404_3