CORBIS


ARNOLD GENTHE—LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION


When the Earth Moved 10


Looking Down Sacramento Street Arnold Genthe • April 18, 1906


When a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco in 1906, photographer Arnold Genthe’s studio and equipment were destroyed. But Genthe had a job to do: documenting one of the great natural disasters in U.S. history. In the hours after the quake struck, as Genthe later recalled in his autobiography, “I went to Montgom- ery Street to the shop of George Kahn, my dealer, and asked him to lend me a camera. ‘Take anything you want,’ Kahn told me. ‘This place is going to burn up anyway.’ ” Genthe roamed the city with a small


handheld Kodak Special during the excruciating hours after the quake when enormous fires consumed many of San Francisco’s buildings. The photo at left is perhaps his most memorable, shot looking down at the flames of the fire as they climb Nob Hill along Sacramento Street. Fatalism gripped the survivors, Genthe reported: “The occupants are sitting on chairs calmly watching the approach of the fire. Groups of people are standing in the street, motionless, gazing at the clouds of smoke. When the fire crept up close, they would just move up a block.” Genthe documented the calamity,


but he couldn’t document the number of fatalities. Civic boosters fabricated a bogus number—478 dead—to conceal the extent of the damage. Not until 2005 did the city admit the truth: the death toll likely sur- passed 3,000. But even that figure is only an estimate.


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