San Francisco Cable Car #523, by Hans Brady

San Francisco Cable Car #523, Washington and Jackson (Streets), Powell Market (intersection), Pepsi Cola advertisement, showing Embarcadero Freeway, Ferry Building, Bay Bridge, and Alameda Naval Air Station, taken at 12:48 hr, in 1956: a photo print, by Hans Brady.

Mr. Brady was a noted commercial photographer in San Francisco, active from the interwar period until the 1970s. Although not widely known for his artistic work, his product photos were widely used, especially his ability to use the scenic locations in and around the City to showcase whatever product was the subject of the assignment.

Hans was an uncle of mine who had been particularly close with my father's sister. We gathered together at many family events over many decades, and he became a mentor of mine in the photographic field when I started to become active with it. He was a lovely and loving guy who was as fascinated by people as he was with his profession, and he was well known for both personality and professionalism.

I had admired this work in his house, both for the balance of the composition and the depth of field, I was particularly attracted to the fact that I could read the clock on the Ferry Building, the depth of field focus was that great, and the grain was that fine. I recall that the film stock used was Ppanatomic X, and that the camera was a 3 x 5 Mamiya, but don't recall what lens was used, not what paper he had printed it on.

He wasn't too much of a studio cat, with lots of lights and reflectors and flashes and stands and stuff - he was out and about in the fog, wind and weather, with the fabulous scenery of the San Francisco Bay Area and Coastal region as his preferred settings. 

Yes, those were the days when every pro (and many amateur) photog had their own darkroom, with the investment in space, printers (usually 2, maybe 3), light-proof cabinet drawers (for paper), refrigerators (uh huh - celluloid film must be kept cool), chemical storage, trays, tanks, and lots of other gumpf. Hans rolled his own film from 100 foot rolls, then developed and printed everything by hand, on his own.

This exemplary capture is a good example of what he could squeeze out of an otherwise mundane scene - a cable car crowded with commuters to back to their daily grind downtown after lunch one day. It was totally unstaged, but masterfully captured by an artist with his fine equipment, steady hand and durable patience.

Using the shadows as photographed, and the shadow calculations I was able to find, this event was chronicled in the middle of Winter. From having grown up in the area, experience shows that the air has regularly been clearest at that time, even back in the bad old days before emissions controls were put in place for stationary and mobile sources of pollutants.

I have shown the full frame in *.jpg form, to protect against image misappropriation, because watermarking is ineffective against modern counterfeiting techniques. Additionally, there are two screen-grabs from the *.tiff file, one of the Ferry Building clock's North face, and one of a shoreline building at the Alameda Naval Air Station, both to show the resolution of the original, and the clarity of the day on which the snap was captured.

Included are the original hand-printed photograph, and a high-resolution digital scannin a computer readable *.tiff file. (3958 px x 2791 px, 12.2MB)

NOTE! SALE IS FINAL. I strongly advise in-person acceptance and taking-of-delivery, at which time transfer of ownership and control will be complete. NO RETURNS, REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES. In the event that shipment is requested by the purchaser, the purchaser assumes all expenses and risks of that shipment and carriage.