From SFGate: Jack London’s lens on 1906 quake – Author’s photos, never seen by public, get centennial show

It is still magic after all these years: Slowly the black and white image comes to life in the darkroom tray at the headquarters of the California Historical Society in San Francisco. The picture is from another time, but it is sharp and clear — it is of a huge domed building, all in ruins, as if it had been bombed.

It is the wreckage of San Francisco’s City Hall, destroyed in an earthquake a century ago this spring. It is a remarkable picture, but the photographer was even more remarkable. He was Jack London.

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