Alexander “Zan” Stark: Images of Mid-20th Century Marin
by Laurie Thompson
We are please to announce that a portion of our Alexander “Zan” Stark postcard negative collection is now live on our website.
Alexander “Zan” Stark (1889–1967) was a Michigan-born photographer who moved to San Francisco around 1914 where he established a photography and lantern slide business.
During the early years of the Depression when his business began to suffer, he moved to Mill Valley to try his luck in Marin County.
In a profile printed in the November 24, 1951 Marin Independent Journal, Stark says that one day, not long after his move to Mill Valley, he was going through some postcards on a rack in a downtown store and decided that he could make much better ones. He borrowed a neighbor’s car and set out to photograph Marin’s beautiful scenery and towns, and began producing his own cards which he signed “Zan.”
In this way a business was born which was to last for decades and which eventually extended beyond Marin and California to include Oregon, Nevada and Utah.
In the early 1950s Stark served as a city councilman in Mill Valley and his son, Zan Stark, Jr., worked for the Mill Valley Record. Father and son became publishers of the Valley of the Moon Review in Boyes Hot Springs in 1953 and a few years later, Zan Stark Sr. moved to Boyes Hot Springs where he remained until his death in 1967.
The Anne T. Kent California Room is grateful to Jeff Craemer for donating this collection of nearly 400 Zan Stark postcard negatives documenting Marin County, c.1933–1955.
We also wish to thank Fairfax librarian, Theresa McGovern and California Room volunteer Rick Bartolacelli for helping us to catalog the Zan Stark collection.
Stay tuned as we continue to process more of this collection and add it to our site.
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
