Spotlight on San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue

Communist demonstrators in front of German consulate,
1937, Call Bulletin photo

Between 1966 and 1969, the San Francisco Examiner donated two libraries of photographs --what newspapermen call “morgues”-- to the San Francisco Public Library. The combined gift of the morgues from the San Francisco News and Hearst’s San Francisco Call-Bulletin was an estimated 2 million photographs.

Fireman on the Embarcadero Freeway near Front St., 1959,
San Francisco News photo

The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue (SFP 39) represents the working files created and used by the newspapers’ staff between the 1920s and September 1965. It consists primarily of images from news agencies and wire services depicting local, state, national and international events and people; together with photographs by local staff photographers, studio portraits, and promotional photographs supplied to the newspapers by families or agencies. Political, social, and cultural leaders, crime victims and suspects, celebrities, athletes and sporting events, accident scenes and victims, street scenes, shipping and waterfront views, and buildings are among the common subjects. This collection is one of the richest sources of historical news photographs documenting San Francisco’s modern development.

Upon receipt of the collection in 1966, photographs of San Francisco places and portraits of local, famous individuals were separated and transferred to the San Francisco History Room (now the San Francisco History Center). These photographs were interfiled with additional photographs from many other sources to form the base of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection. In the late 1980s, the rest of San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue was transferred to the San Francisco History Center. The San Francisco News-

Paulette Hefner being escorted from
The Cellar nightclub by Amy Sliger,
1965, News-Call Bulletin photo

Call Bulletin Photo Morgue does make up the bulk of the San Francisco History Subject Collection. However, the morgue also includes statewide, national, and international subjects and people that have not been digitized or cataloged. There are over 1,200 cartons of photographs in off-site storage and the majority of the photographic print files remain in their original order, as received by the library. The files that were not broken up and distributed to library subject files are divided into nine series, with an alphabetic code assigned to each series. Five series are from The Call Bulletin and The News-Call Bulletin and four series are the files of The San Francisco News. Since these two groupings represent the files of separate newspapers over a roughly parallel period, there is significant overlap in content. All of the series include interfiled Call Bulletin staff photographs, submitted photographs (studio portraits or promotional photos), and wire or news agency photographs (news wire service photographs include Acme, Associated Press and International News). Approximately 40% of the "People" files and probably up to 90% of some geographic files are from news agencies. Researchers may request for people, places and subjects to be searched in the morgue. There is an in-house guide that breaks down the series - with detailed lists of subjects and famous people. When researchers order scans from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue, selections are cataloged and added to the online database.

Market Street, 1960,
San Francisco News-Call Bulletin photo

The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue is one of the largest and most significant photograph morgues of a twentieth century American newspaper that is open for research in a public library (list of newspaper photograph morgues in custody of public institutions). Photographs from the morgue have been published in books, displayed in exhibitions, added as rich content in documentaries, and of course, liked, shared and tweeted via social media -  locally, nationally and worldwide. What's on the 6th Floor likes digging deep into the photo files for the series "It Came From the (Photo) Morgue!" In the late 1960s, the Hearst Corporation transferred copyright of staff photographers to the San Francisco Public Library.

Please come visit and explore the morgue!

The San Francisco Examiner split the newspaper morgue gift and the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin negatives were donated to the Bancroft Library.