(via watsamotto)

Kickstarter : Your Guide to Treasure Island — A Photography Book by Matt Fisher

A few years ago, a buddy of mine started working for the Treasure Island Development Authority and I was fortunate to visit him on the island located in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.  It was my first time on the former Naval base and the location had a deeply profound effect on me. We ended up doing a Current TV documentary on the island’s past, present, and future.  Over the last couple of years my lens has turned from video to photography.  I discovered that this really enabled me to capture Treasure Island’s unique and desolate landscape as haunting stills.  With its lush and rocky history as the 1939 World Fair site, 50 years of Navy occupation, and now its transition into public housing, the island has become a dreary picturesque dream to me.

Hundreds of photographs later, I am now ready to design and print the book, “Your Guide to Treasure Island.”  Serving as a time capsule of sorts, the book aims to be a visual representation of present-day Treasure Island alongside historical archival photography, paralleling the different lives this mysterious landmass has lived.  Due to San Francisco’s recent plans for restoration and re-development of the island, the publishing of this book comes at a critical time - it will act as a snapshot, paying tribute to our evolving culture and documenting an extremely important element of Bay Area history before it is forgotten beneath new ideas.  When the book is published, I would like to donate a majority of the copies to public libraries and schools in California to serve as a historical reference and immortalize the island’s time and place in our ever-changing world.

Click through to Kickstart and watch the accompanying video.

Sixth Street and Minna, 18 April 1906

(via arsvivendi)

laorish:

olliemaxwell:

According to A History of Asian Americans: Strangers From A Different Shore by Ronald Takaki most of the Filipino population in America during the Great Depression married white women.

TAKE THAT YELLOW FEVER!

American history books never mention that immigration quotas prevented Asian women from immigrating to the US. Asian immigrant men married black, white, or Native American women. Most of the descendants of these unions today don’t even know about their Asian heritage.

It was never the quota that prevented women from emigrating to the US during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most women of men who came to this country stayed home due to socio-economic reasons, though there was political hyperbole during the time of the gold rush where any woman traveling in steerage was suspected of being a prostitute and many articles were written on this. To avoid that misconception, wives of affluent merchants often took first class tickets on trans-pacific trips. Hope that clears up for you.

slavicinferno:

I’m so proud!