Arnold Genthe. The Cellar Door Genthe. Public domain artistic photography.

Illustration of the book Old Chinatown : a Book of Pictures.

Arnold Genthe (1869-1942) was a German-born American photographer who is best known for his photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown and the 1906 earthquake. He began his career as a portrait photographer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1895. He eventually settled in San Francisco, where he established a successful portrait studio. Genthe's photographs of Chinatown, which he began taking in the early 1900s, are considered some of the most important records of that community at the time. He was also one of the few photographers to document the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.