Photography at CHS includes over half a million images in an array of formats documenting the history of California in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the collections are daguerreotypes, albumen prints, stereo views and photographic albums. Images represent:

• Views of California
• Extensive holdings of early San Francisco
• Portraits of individuals
• Work by celebrated photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge , Minor White, Alma Lavenson, Arnold Genthe and Carleton Watkins

To view CHS images and texts contributed to collaborative projects with other institutions and search across all contributed images, go to the University of California’s Calisphere http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/
and type “California Historical Society” in the search box and browse over 8,000 images from our collection.

Guide to the CHS Photography Collections
The following contains lists of subject headings which represent contents of photo folders. Images cannot be viewed digitally.

• San Francisco by Subject
• San Francisco Streets
• General Subject
• Access by Location
• Oversized Photographs by Subject
• Portraits
• Oversized Portraits
• Photo Album Shelf List

Photography Sources

• Photographic Process Descriptions
• Daguerreotype and Card Mounted Photograph Size and Classification Descriptions

Collections at University of Southern California

The California Historical Society houses a portion of its photography collection at the Regional History Center in the Doheny Library. The collection has two major parts, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Collection and the Title Insurance and Trust Company (TICOR) Collection. Together these collections are incomparable for the documentary picture they provide of the development of the Los Angeles region from 1860 to 1960. In all, there are some 23,000 images in the two collections.

(click to access USC Digital Archive)

To view CHS holdings in USC’s online digital archive go to http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/index.htm, and
click on BROWSE, and then click again on California Historical Society.