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Arnold Genthe - Women and children crossing a street, Chinatown, San Francisco

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Arnold Genthe - Women and children crossing a street, Chinatown, San Francisco

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Summary

Title devised.
Purchase; Genthe Estate; 1942 or 1943.

Arnold Genthe (1869-1942) was a German-born American photographer who is best known for his photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown and the 1906 earthquake. He began his career as a portrait photographer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1895. He eventually settled in San Francisco, where he established a successful portrait studio. Genthe's photographs of San Francisco Chinatown, which he began taking in the early 1900s, are considered some of the most important records of that community at the time. He was also one of the few photographers to document the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

In the 19th century, a majority of Chinese immigrants were single men who worked for a while and returned home. At first, they were attracted to North America by the gold rush in California. A relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, before federal law stopped their immigration. After the gold rush, Chinese immigrants worked as agricultural laborers, on railroad construction crews throughout the West, and in low-paying industrial jobs. Soon, many opened their own businesses such as restaurants, laundries, and other personal service concerns. With the onset of hard economic times in the 1870s, European immigrants and Americans began to compete for the jobs traditionally reserved for the Chinese. Such competition was accompanied by anti-Chinese sentiment, riots, and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The result was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century.

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Date

01/01/1896
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Source

Library of Congress
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