One City/Two Visions

Bedford Arts Publishers, 1990

This unusual book is the fourth in a series of accordion-fold titles which "at rest" or on a shelf measures 9 x 12 inches, but when unfolded extends to 101/2 feet. One side of this unfolded publication features a superb reproduction of the 360' 13-part mammoth-plate panoramic view taken of San Francisco in 1878 by the important early photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Only five known originals of this Victorian-era panoramic series are thought to exist - so the view contained in One City/Two Visions is one seldom seen. The other side of One City/Two Visions features a 1990 panorama by the contemporary photographer Mark Klett, who is known in photographic circles for his reshooting of historical photographs of the West. Klett created his own sweeping image from approximately the same location atop San Francisco's Nob Hill where Muybridge stood nearly a century earlier. The clarity of each image - due equally to the photographers and the reproduction process - is remarkable. The British-born Muybridge established a world wide reputation with his early photographs of Yosemite, as well as his studies of human and animal locomotion in which he helped prove there was a moment when all four of a horse's legs were off the ground at once. His panoramic views were one more aspect of his brilliant and inventive career. One City/Two Visions includes an introduction by the art historian Peter Bacon Hales and an essay by Klett, "A Note on Rephotographing the Muybridge Panorama." -- From Independent Publisher