Lawrence's Ruins

Below, a tiny detail from the George Lawrence's famous 1906 photograph of San Francisco in ruins... I'm currently listening to the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa LP, and musing on the album's provisional title Earthquake Country (a better, less fussy title I think) yielded Lawrence's vast panoramic shot of the devastated city taken some six weeks after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck on April 18th 1906. Nowadays cityscape panoramas are a dime a dozen but Lawrence's photograph still impresses with its clarity and scope and all the more amazing that it was taken from "Lawrence Captive Airship", which was simply a kite sent soaring over the bay. The Wiki entry has an excellent blow-up of George Lawrence's photograph here. An even bigger copy of the picture (11mbs) can be found here