One hundred years ago today, Jack London died in Sonoma County, Calif., at the age of 40. He was famous for novels, like the “The Call of the Wild,” which were based on his adventures, trekking through the Klondike or sailing the South Pacific. He was the archetype of the macho writer — before Ernest Hemingway — having been, among other things, a Socialist, a hobo, a sailor, a war correspondent and an oyster pirate.
“They would steal the oysters that other people had caught,” his great-granddaughter Tarnel Abbott said. “It was rough. He could have been killed anytime during those escapades. His boat eventually was ransacked and burned. He had to give that life up and straighten out.”
Although he went on to become a prolific writer, he was also an avid photographer. “Jack London: The Paths Men Take,” a new book by Contrasto, offers a glimpse into his photography, with pictures from London, Japan, China, Korea, post-earthquake San Francisco, and the South Pacific, published alongside excerpts from his books.
For work from the early 20th century, the writing feels strangely contemporary. The first-person narration could be straight from a blog post, and his language, both flowery and direct, easily holds our attention. While researching “The People of the Abyss,” his nonfiction book about living in London’s then-notorious East End in 1902, he tried without luck to hire a fixer from the travel agency Thomas Cook, then donned lower-class attire to blend into the area (which is now the trendiest part of the city).
“At the market,” London wrote, “tottery old men and women were searching in the garbage thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans and vegetables, while little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels but partially decayed, which they devoured on the spot.”
Ms. Abbott, who has performed a version of her great-grandfather’s book “The Iron Heel,” which she said predicted the rise of fascism, agrees that his work has a particular resonance today.
“In many ways he’s still very modern,” she said. “It was a harsh, harsh world. He didn’t shy from it, either, with the camera or the writing.”
The photographs in London are compelling: from a drunken girl fight and food lines, to people sleeping on benches with cricked necks. Later, while serving as The San Francisco Examiner’s correspondent to the Russo-Japanese War, he had his camera confiscated by the Japanese military and was detained because he broke protocol and photographed some local boys in the street.
It’s his photographs of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, however, that are perhaps most gripping. He had been hired by Collier’s magazine to document the disaster, as he lived just north of the city. He described the obliteration, which was total.
“Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed,” London wrote. “San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling-houses on its outskirts.”
He told tales of fortunes that vanished in an instant, and a man who offered $1,000 for a team of horses, yet found no takers. His presence as observer and commentator, not to mention local resident, gives today’s viewers a sense of how it must have felt.
Those are the photographs that most affect Ms. Abbott, who fears the Bay Area — where she also lives — is overdue for another big one. “Those earthquake photos are stunning,” she said. “Absolutely magnificent. It kind of gives me goose bumps to even be thinking of them.”
Seeing refugee camps in the middle of one of America’s most important cities is also a reminder that other people’s suffering is not that far removed from our own, a valuable lesson in the midst of the 2016 European migrant crisis.
San Francisco may have been razed, but it has fought its way back, 110 years later, to be wealthier and more powerful than ever before. And like the England of Jack London’s time, the problem of homelessness seems to be overwhelming San Francisco at present.
“It’s so reminiscent of what we see today. There are so many homeless people sleeping on our streets,” Ms. Abbott said.
“I look at pictures of London in 1902. It could be Oakland or San Francisco in 2016. These are haunting images, as they should be.”
Jonathan Blaustein is an artist and writer based in New Mexico. He contributes regularly to the blog A Photo Editor.
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