Harry Quillen's Los Angeles Chinatown
With immense appreciation to photographer, Harry Quillen,
we can go back in time to our Chinatown
of the 1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's--
all because of an unknown friend
at the Circus World Museum in Wisconsin.
Circus World, Wisconsin ????
Harry was an avid circus photographer
and after his death in 1972, his large format pictures
of early circus life were donated by his family
to the Ringling Circus Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
In a stack of yellow Kodak print boxes, stored in a closet,
Harry's photographs remained hidden for 26 years.
One day in 1998, the Circus librarians found the boxes and
inside were photos of lions, elephants, bears and...
Chinese families ??
They realized in Harry's boxes,
LA Chinatown was documented over 40 years amongst the materials !
The Museum reached out to the Los Angeles Public Library in 1998.
Thanks to LAPL
Harry's negatives traveled 1,985 miles back home
to Los Angeles-- 26 years later.
If Harry's photos had NOT traveled by accident to Wisconsin,
his entire archive may have been destroyed
in the LA Central Library Fire of 1986.
We are deeply grateful to the Circus Museum and to LAPL
for sharing Harry's remarkable photographs with the world.
We are in process of cataloguing his unprinted work.
Negatives of the "New Section" of Chinatown,
aka Chung King West Plaza
were identified on May 26, 2012.
We are still searching for negatives of Chung King Road,
which are mysteriously absent from the archives.
But stay tuned. It's unfathomable that Harry would not have explored
the whole of Chung King Road with his SpeedGraphic camera !
These new negatives below were shot with my Panasonic Lumix LX-3
on the lightbox you see pictured, and changed to a rough positive for viewing.
High resolution prints will later be added to the photo collection at www.lapl.org.
Thank you, Harry, for your enduring legacy to Chinatown.
-- Jody Hummer, Chinatown Film Bridge
Harry Quillen and little Circus bear
Willie Soo Hoo in Chinatown Playing Circus, in front of the
Forbidden Palace (now Blossom)
Photo by Harry Quillen
Some of the New Negatives
Some of Harry Quillen's Remarkable Photos of Chinatown at LAPL.ORG
More to come....