Author Sara S. Hodson, retired curator at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, will present a lecture on the book, “Jack London, Photographer,” which she authored together with Jeanne Campbell Reesman and Philip Adam, on the Pasadena Senior Center’s Cultural Thursday, at 2 p.m. Thursday.
The lecture is both virtual and in-person, but space is limited so please submit your reservations early. Reservations are also required for those choosing to attend the Zoom event.
Jack London (1876-1916) remains one of the most widely read American writers, known for his naturalist fiction, socialist novels and essays, journalism, and the many adventures that he shared with the world. London was also an accomplished photographer, producing nearly 12,000 photographs during his lifetime. “Jack London, Photographer” is the first book devoted to his photography.
London’s subjects included such people as the ragged homeless of London’s East End and the freezing refugees of the Russo-Japanese War, the latter photographed on assignment for the Hearst newspapers. He wrote his eyewitness account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire for Collier’s magazine in London, and returned two weeks later with his camera to document a city in ruins but slowly recovering. During this period, he took humane images of the South Seas islanders that contrasted dramatically with the period’s stereotypical portraits of indigenous peoples.
In 1914 he documented the U.S. invasion of Veracruz during the Mexican Revolution. Although some of his images were used in newspaper and magazine stories and in his books, the majority have remained unpublished until now.
The book’s more than 200 photographs were printed from the original negatives in the California State Parks collection and from the original photographs in albums at the Huntington Library.
For more information and to register for either the virtual or in-person event, visit www.pasadenaseniorcenter.org/