Whitehurse Aerial Surveys
Album of Large-Format Aerial Views of Los Angeles, c. 1964
Spiral-bound photo album; silver prints (53)
Each 11 x 14
With the studio's credit stamp verso.
With the studio's credit stamp verso.
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This album of crisp, large-format photographs shows low altitude aerial views of Los Angeles. The work was completed by the photographic firm Whitehurse Aerial Surveys, an outfit which was founded...
This album of crisp, large-format photographs shows low altitude aerial views of Los Angeles. The work was completed by the photographic firm Whitehurse Aerial Surveys, an outfit which was founded by Ralph Whitehurse in the late 1930s under the name “Whitehurse Aerial Photos Inc.” Ralph Whitehurse seems to have briefly left the business by the mid-1940s, working instead as a traveling photographer who carried his full developing and printing equipment with him in his novelty vehicle, “The Photomobile.”
The aerial photos in the album speak to Los Angeles’s post-war real estate boom. Many contemporary advertisements for the Whitehurse company mention that their survey work is “valuable to Realtors, Land Developers, Industries and Housing Tracks.” A 1960 advertisement, published in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, advertises that Whitehurse recently “completed an aerial survey of the entire Los Angeles basin with overlapping vertical and oblique photographs. Prints from these negatives are available in any size from a single print to a complete survey at very attractive prices. We are also prepared to make topographic maps, mosaics, large aerial murals, photo blow-ups from these negatives. We will gladly mail you a complimentary copy of our aerial photo index map and a list of towns that we have mapped in California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Arizona upon request.”
The aerial photos in the album speak to Los Angeles’s post-war real estate boom. Many contemporary advertisements for the Whitehurse company mention that their survey work is “valuable to Realtors, Land Developers, Industries and Housing Tracks.” A 1960 advertisement, published in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, advertises that Whitehurse recently “completed an aerial survey of the entire Los Angeles basin with overlapping vertical and oblique photographs. Prints from these negatives are available in any size from a single print to a complete survey at very attractive prices. We are also prepared to make topographic maps, mosaics, large aerial murals, photo blow-ups from these negatives. We will gladly mail you a complimentary copy of our aerial photo index map and a list of towns that we have mapped in California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Arizona upon request.”