Background
Arnold Genthe was born on January 8, 1869 in Berlin, Germany to Luise Zober and Hermann Genthe, a professor of Latin and Greek at the Graues Kloster (Grey Monastery) in Berlin.
(This is an autobiography of Arnold Genthe. He gave a glim...)
This is an autobiography of Arnold Genthe. He gave a glimpse of family and student life in old Germany. His interest in photography is what kept him in America. He shares his life along with his photographs as the years passed by.
https://www.amazon.com/As-I-Remember-Arnold-Genthe/dp/B000S6TUTI/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Arnold+Genthe&qid=1577109553&sr=8-3
1936
Arnold Genthe was born on January 8, 1869 in Berlin, Germany to Luise Zober and Hermann Genthe, a professor of Latin and Greek at the Graues Kloster (Grey Monastery) in Berlin.
Arnold Genthe attended Wilhelm Gymnasium in Hamburg, Germany, then studied classical philology, archaeology, and philosophy at the Universities of Berlin and Jena, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy in 1894. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1894 to 1895.
After emigrating to San Francisco in 1895 to work as a tutor for the son of Baron and Baroness J. Henrich von Schroeder, he taught himself photography. He was intrigued by the Chinese section of the city and photographed its inhabitants, from children to drug addicts, Due to his subjects' possible fear of his camera or their reluctance to have pictures taken, Arnold Genthe sometimes hid his camera. He also sometimes removed evidence of Western culture from these pictures, cropping or erasing as needed. About 200 of his Chinatown pictures survive, and these comprise the only known photographic depictions of the area before the 1906 earthquake.
After local magazines published some of his photographs in the late 1890s, he opened a portrait studio. Arnold Genthe knew some of the city's wealthy matrons, and as his reputation grew, his clientele included Nance O'Neil, Sarah Bernhardt, Nora May French, and Jack London. In 1904 he traveled to Western Europe and Tangier with the famous watercolorist, Francis McComas.
In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed Genthe's studio, but he rebuilt. His photograph of the earthquake's aftermath, Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906, is his most famous photograph.
Within a short time, Arnold Genthe joined the art colony in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where he fraternized with the literary elite, including George Sterling, Jack London, Harry Leon Wilson, Ambrose Bierce, and Mary Austin. Here he was able to pursue his work in color photography. Although his stay in Carmel was relatively short (1905-1907), he was appointed in 1907 to the Board of Directors of the Art Gallery in Monterey’s luxury Hotel Del Monte, where he insured that the work of important regional art photographers, such as Laura Adams Armer and Anne Brigman, was displayed with his own prints. By the spring of 1907 he had established his residence and studio at 3209 Clay Street in San Francisco, where he continued to enjoy membership in the celebrated Bohemian Club, attend prominent society functions, display his own work, and pen newspaper reviews of photo and art exhibitions.
In 1911 Arnold Genthe moved to New York City, where he remained until his death of a heart attack in 1942.
(This is an autobiography of Arnold Genthe. He gave a glim...)
1936
A linguist, Arnold Genthe was proficient in eight modem and ancient languages, writing his doctoral thesis in Latin. He received several university scholarships. A collector of paintings, sculpture, old books, tapestries, furniture and Chinese porcelains, he also published several short stories and poems.
Arnold Genthe owned a cat called Buzzer. Buzzer often appeared in portraitures with Genthe's subjects, most notably Broadway actresses to whom the cat warmed.