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Keywords: Photograph
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- Abstract: The large development projects of the 1930s, designed to serve a growing population, helped shape California in many ways. Most are still integral today. Photographs show the progress of two massive Northern California projects: the Golden Gate Bridge, which links San Francisco and Marin County, and the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco with Oakland and the East Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most recognized bridges in the world. It is unique not only because of its vermilion orange color: this steel suspension bridge, with a 4,200-foot-long central span and two towers that are 746 feet tall, is the largest ever built. The photographs in this group, taken between 1933 and 1934, show the various phases of construction from different perspectives, looking down, up, and across the span as it was being built. Some photos also show the workers who helped build this famous structure. The Golden Gate Bridge was built under the direction of Joseph Baermann Strauss, an Ohio-born engineer who built more than 400 bridges. The portrait of Strauss also shows the partially built bridge in the background. The Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicles and pedestrians in 1937. The Bay Bridge construction began in 1933, and the span opened to vehicles in 1936. At 8.25 miles, it is the world?s longest steel bridge. The bridge consists of twin suspension bridges. Many of the photos show workers on catwalks with cables and pulleys, building the bridge. Growing cities also created greater demands for resources, including electrical power. The building of powerhouses like the Pitt River Power House and the Las Plumas Power House near Oroville, shown here, helped to meet this need. Southern California also saw large construction projects. One image in this group shows the San Vicente Dam under construction.A few of these images were taken by Jervie Henry Eastman, who established Eastman's Studio in 1921. His photographs were often turned into picture postcards, such as the one of the oil rigs along Ocean Boulevard in Huntington Beach, in 1935.
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- Abstract: In 1931, a severe drought hit the Southern and Midwestern plains. As crops died and winds picked up, dust storms began. As the "Dust Bowl" photograph shows, crops literally blew away in "black blizzards" as years of poor farming practices and over-cultivation combined with the lack of rain. By 1934, 75% of the United States was severely affected by this terrible drought.The one-two punch of economic depression and bad weather put many farmers out of business. In the early 1930s, thousands of Dust Bowl refugees ? mainly from Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico ? packed up their families and migrated west, hoping to find work. Entire families migrated together (such as the men shown in "Three generations of Texans now Drought Refugees") in search of a better life. Images such as "Midcontinent ? Family Standing on the Road with Car," "Drought Refugees," and "Untitled, ca. 1935 (Worn-Down Family in Front of Tent)" offer a glimpse into their experience on the road, and show that cars provided many families both transportation and shelter on the road. About 200,000 of the migrants headed for California. The state needed to figure out how to absorb the thousands of destitute people crossing its borders daily. One of their tactics was to document the plight of the refugees. In 1935, photographer Dorothea Lange joined the Rural Rehabilitation Division of the California State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA), a section of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. She was assigned the job of using her camera to document the growing number of homeless Dust Bowl refugees migrating to California. She worked with Paul S. Taylor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was researching conditions of rural poverty in order to make recommendations on how to improve the workers' conditions. The work by Taylor and Lange played an important role in helping to raise public awareness of the crisis. The reports they made for the government included both data and striking images that revealed the desperate conditions in which the migrants lived and confirmed the need for government intervention. Stark images such as "Home of Oklahoma Drought Refugees" resonated with the public, and portraits of drought refugees like "Ruby from Arkansas" and others shown in this topic humanized the migrants for more fortunate citizens. In March 1936, Lange took what became one of her most famous images, "Migrant Mother." This image of a 32-year-old woman became an icon for the suffering of ordinary people during Great Depression.
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- Abstract: The modern advertising industry really began in the early 1900s. These early advertising images show how companies approached the business of selling products, places, and ideas in the early 20th century.
Overview
The promotion of products, particularly national brands, began to become more prevalent in the early 1900s. Some categories of advertising shown in this group of images are still with us today: cars, cigarettes, and products aimed at homemakers. In California, car dealers and garages used advertising to promote products and services early on. One photograph shows the Lush Garage in Orange promoting Goodrich Tires as the "Best in the Long Run." In 1936, a photographic postcard for the Chevrolet Garage in Pomona offered 12 lube jobs for $6 in time payments. And as another image illustrates, one still-recognizable brand, Schlitz Beer, got on the advertising bandwagon early at an automobile race in 1908.
Photographs of displays from the Westwood Hardware and Furniture Store in 1936 advertise kitchen stoves and camps stoves from Coleman; and Dr. West's toothbrushes, with bristles that "will not get soggy." A 1929 photo shows a baker and two women in costume advertising Piping Pan Cakery Compound in San Diego.
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- Abstract: Take a peek at the artistic side of science in this virtual exhibit, featuring work by Eva Sutton, Alexis Rockman and Sidney Harris.
- Subject:
Science and Technology, Arts
- Grade Level:
Primary, Secondary
- Collection:
Teachers' Domain
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- Abstract: This lesson will allow students to combine photographing nature with creating a Haiku poem to express what they see in the photograph.
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- Abstract: The Gold Rush era was marked by lawlessness: duels, murders in broad daylight, public hangings, jail breakouts, and vigilantism were everyday occurrences. The images in this group are a vivid record of those times. Included here are photographs of convicted murderers like James Egan, who was sent to San Quentin for 35 years for killing a man in a saloon brawl; and John "Chicken" Devine, who beat a man to death with a rock. A newspaper article reports that former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California David. S. Terry killed US Senator David C. Broderick in a duel, and a half-page drawing depicts the crime. Men weren't the only criminals: pickpockets Jennie Hastings and Dolly Mickey are also represented here. Law officers were in short supply, and laws were not uniformly enforced. Some men ? such as those in the photograph "Sharpshooters of the Vigilante Committee" ? took the law into their own hands, enforcing "justice" as they saw fit. They posted public notices like the "Warning!" sign, which threatens hanging as retribution for "pilfering, robbing, stealing, or any act of lawless violence." Several images portray individuals "rescued from the authorities" and hanged ? before being tried or even given a hearing for the crimes of which they were accused. Drugs were also part of Gold Rush communities. As several images show, people sometimes smoked opium in underground opium dens. And, as one photograph makes clear, opium smoking crossed racial and cultural boundaries. Eventually, law-abiding citizens grew weary of the uncontrolled murder and mayhem in their rapidly growing communities. As the Gold Rush era drew to an end, people felt that existing legal and judicial institutions had to be strengthened.
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- Abstract: Students will learn to differentiate between observation and inference using a photograph of an Algonkian boat building and colonial coins.
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- Abstract: Many forms of entertainment and leisure activities people participated in during the early decades of the 20th century are not that different from those we enjoy today. At the turn of the century people found entertainment at carnivals and festivals and exhibitions. Photographs here include the California Midwinter International Exposition in San Francisco in 1894, and the Anaheim Carnival of 1911. Sports were also a popular pastime. Photographs show people participating in tennis and golf, but spectator sports were also popular. In 1929, Miss Jessie Darnley apparently swam her way to the title of Miss Anaheim in a pool filled with three tons of oranges. A number of players became celebrities, as witnessed by publicity stills of baseball greats Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Carl Klindt. Electricity and improved communications meant that entertainment was no longer confined to live theater. People turned to the radio for both information and entertainment. One photograph shows the family of a Democratic nominee for US Senator, Sheridan Downey, gathered around the radio listening to election results. Another depicts a live radio broadcast. During this era the film industry boomed in Hollywood, generating popular images and mythologies surrounding the movies and movie stars. Photographs in this group include some on-set shots of actors, directors, and movie-making equipment. The owner of the famous Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Sid Grauman, is pictured with film star Mary Pickford. Other images include silent film stars, the original "Our Gang" cast at the opening of the Broadway Theater, and a shot of the Spreckels Theater on the night of a Three Stooges film premiere in 1934.
As had been true for centuries, people enjoyed music, literature, and the arts. Images here include jazz musicians performing and a studio portrait of Roland Hayes, considered one of the greatest tenors in the 1920s. Popular literary figures pictured include author Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 book The Jungle helped raise popular awareness about food processing and contributed in large part to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Photographs of poets and writers who wrote about or resided in California include Joaquin Miller, George Sterling, Charles Warren Stoddard, Robinson Jeffers, Edwin Markham, and Mary Austin (standing in front of a mural with Mexican artist Diego Rivera).
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