BEFORE THE WAR CHANGED EVERYTHING

Maslin, Marshall

A Camera Tour in Full Color San Francisco and Bay Cities [Early color photography, Pre-war San Francisco, Bay Area Cityscapes, Large-format Pictorial]

San Francisco: The Printing Corporation, 1938.

A SUNLIT SAN FRANCISCO CAPTURED JUST BEFORE THE MODERN ERA ARRIVED
A striking oversized color pictorial celebrating San Francisco and the Bay Cities during the final years before World War II transformed the region. Produced at the height of late-Depression optimism, the volume showcases the city through richly saturated oil-color printing, presenting California as a place of architectural grandeur, scenic beauty, and modern promise.

Rather than serving as a conventional travel guide, the album functions as a visual souvenir and presentation piece. Twenty-five large color views highlight the city's landmarks, waterfronts, bridges, civic buildings, and surrounding Bay communities, complemented by a bird's-eye map of the region. The unusual oil-color printing process produces remarkably rich, painterly images that distinguish the work from contemporary process-color publications.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Publisher's original oblong pictorial heavy-stock wrappers printed in silver, black, and yellow. Stapled binding. Oblong quarto; approximately 14 by 11 inches. 28 pages including introductory text and 25 full-page color photographic illustrations with descriptive captions, plus a bird's-eye map of San Francisco Bay. Printed using oil-color lithographic techniques rather than conventional process-color printing. First Edition.

CONDITION: Very Good+. The stapled binding remains firm and secure. Colors are exceptionally fresh and vibrant throughout with a clean interior. Light age-darkening appears along the upper edge of the wrappers with several small areas of faint water spotting beneath the bird decoration on the front cover. A handsome, well-preserved example of an oversized pictorial publication seldom encountered in such clean condition.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE – California Between Two Eras.
  Issued only a year after completion of the Golden Gate Bridge and just before America's entry into World War II, this album preserves the Bay Area at a remarkable moment of transition. It portrays San Francisco as an elegant Pacific metropolis whose identity centered on civic architecture, tourism, and spectacular scenery rather than the massive wartime shipbuilding and industrial expansion that would soon redefine the region.

The volume also reflects an important chapter in American commercial printing. During the late 1930s, publishers experimented with oil-color reproduction to create richly saturated photographic images before modern offset color printing became the industry standard. The result is a publication that combines documentary photography with an almost painterly visual character, making it equally appealing to collectors of California history, graphic arts, photography, and travel ephemera.

SUBJECTS: San Francisco; San Francisco Bay Area; Early Color Photography; California Pictorials; Pre-World War II California; Golden Gate Bridge; American Regional Photography; 1930s Travel; Urban Landscapes; Graphic Arts, California History; Photography; Travel; Pictorial Books; Americana.

Item #21393

Price: $85.00