Snapshots of the Past

San Francisco Chinatown: The Mountebank"" – Historic Print

San Francisco Chinatown: The Mountebank"", [no date recorded on caption card] — historic photograph
San Francisco Chinatown: The Mountebank"", [no date recorded on caption card]. Historic photograph from the San Francisco collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

San Francisco Chinatown: The Mountebank"" comes to life in this historic photograph, reproduced from the original with every detail intact. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.

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San Francisco Chinatown: The Mountebank""

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Titled "The Mountebank," this print shows a street performer of the kind who drew crowds in San Francisco's Chinatown by staging showy routines to sell remedies and wares. Arnold Genthe, a German-born photographer who worked in the city from the mid-1890s until the 1906 earthquake, made a long series of Chinatown street scenes that recorded everyday commerce and public life there. The record gives no date, so the picture is best read as part of that broader body of work, and its crowd-pleasing subject is worth noticing as a glimpse of street entertainment and sales customs of the period.

Created / published[no date recorded on caption card]
Medium1 photographic print.
SubjectsPhoto by Arnold Genthe. This record contains unverified data from caption card. Caption card tracings: Manners & customs; Ca.--SF--Chinatown; Master photog.; Shelf.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,016 × 1,536 px · prints to 3 × 5 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-130814

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