A Pageant of Photography. (Golden Gate International Exposition). First edition

Squarish folio. 30 x 32cm, Original spiral bound wraps and thic plastic jacket. Fold mark iin lower corner. A survey of photography published in conjunction with the highly influential exhibition of the same name, curated by Ansel Adams and held at the Palace of Fine Arts in 1940 as part of the Golden Gate International Exposition. This was the first major show In California of photography as an art form. The publication was directed by Ansel Adams and edited by T. J. Maloney, Chairman of U.S. Camera. Grace McCann Morley, Director of the San Francisco Museum of Art contributed an essay on The Motion Picture and worked closely with Adams on both the exhibition and the book. Focused almost exclusively on American photography, A Pageant of Photography highlighted many significant California photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Notably, there was an entire section devoted to California Women Photographers (female photographers from California were featured in many of the other sections as well) and Dorothea Lange contributed an essay on documentary photography. The people, landscape and built environment of California also figured largely in the subject matter of the photographs. .Diego Rivera's oil painting "The Flower Vendor" one of the most significant works in the Albert M. Bender Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA) was exhibited as part of a display on color reproduction by Crocker Union (the San Francisco-based publisher of the catalog).Ownership stamp of Roi Partridge, Berkeley.