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Photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, Taken by James Wong Howe, 1944
BANC PIC 1996.014--PIC
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Collection Title: Photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, Taken by James Wong Howe
Date: 1944
Collection Number: BANC PIC 1996.014--PIC
Photographer:
James Wong Howe
Extent:
29 b&w photographic prints, 21 x 26 cm. or smaller.
29 digital objects
Repository: The Bancroft Library.
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English
Collection is available for use.
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish photographs must be submitted
in writing to the Curator of Pictorial Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library
as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must
also be obtained by the reader.
Copyright restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted
to research and educational purposes.
[Identification of item], Photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, Taken by James Wong Howe, 1944, BANC PIC 1996.014--PIC,
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Digital Representations Available
Digital representations of selected original pictorial materials are available in the list of materials below. Digital image
files were prepared from selected Library originals by the Library Photographic Service. Library originals were copied onto
35mm color transparency film; the film was scanned and transferred to Kodak Photo CD (by Custom Process); and the Photo CD
files were color-corrected and saved in JFIF (JPEG) format for use as viewing files.
The Photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown collection was purchased in 1996.
James Wong Howe was born Wong Tung Jim on August 28, 1899 in Kwantung (Canton), China. He moved to the United States at age
5. After pursuing a career as a professional boxer in the Northwest, Howe moved to Los Angeles and became a delivery boy for
a commercial photographer. In 1917 Howe entered the Hollywood film industry and soon became an assistant cameraman, working
with such notable directors as Cecil B. DeMille. In 1922 he became a director of photography and quickly established a reputation
as an inventive and meticulous craftsman. Initially known as James Howe, his Chinese name was added by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
in hopes that a more exotic-sounding name appearing on film credits would enhance publicity for both Howe and the studio.
In industry circles, Howe acquired the nickname of Low Key Hoe for his distinctive application of low-key photography. Howe
also pioneered the use of deep focus and the hand-held camera. Howe won Academy Awards for his cinematography for
The Rose Tattoo (1955) and
Hud (1963). Throughout his career Howe was also active as a still photographer. James Wong Howe died in 1976.
Other notable films featuring the cinematography of Howe include
Peter Pan (1924),
The Thin Man (1934),
Mark of the Vampire (1935),
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937),
They Made Me a Criminal (1939),
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942),
Body and Soul (1947),
He Ran All the Way (1951),
Come Back Little Sheba (1953),
Picnic (1956),
The Sweet Smell of Success (1957),
The Old Man and the Sea (1958), and
Funny Lady (1975).
The Photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown collection contains 29 photographs taken by James Wong Howe during World War
Two documenting the assimilation of Chinese Americans. The collection is only a portion of a larger group of photographs commissioned
by
Look magazine in 1944 "to get behind the tourist front" of San Francisco's Chinatown. The collection features various workers,
children, soldiers, and youth in an attempt to illustrate the degree to which Chinese Americans had been assimilated into
mainstream American culture and were thus supportive of the United States' war efforts. Included among the photographs are
scenes of Chinese American home life, schooling, recreation, dining, and work places such as a newspaper press, child care
center, telephone switchboard, construction site, pawn broker, and various offices.
The original
Look article,
Chinatown, San Francisco (issued December 26, 1944; pp. 22-27), explains the magazine's choice of Howe as the photographer for the article, gives
a brief history of Chinese Americans, makes a claim for the Chinese American allegiance to the United States' war cause, and
presents a series of 18 fully captioned photographs taken in Chinatown. Though most of the prints in the collection are uncaptioned
with the exception of classificatory information, some include hand-written versions of the captions found in the
Look article. The series arrangement of the present finding aid is generally based on the subject headings found on the print
versos. Some information contained in the bracketed captions, though not included on the versos, is taken directly from the
Look captions. Captions in the container listing marked with an asterisk (*) were included in the original
Look article.
In addition to the captions and subject classifications, the print versos also contain various numberings and a hand stamp.