HABS, as the Historic American Buildings Survey is informally called, is arguably the best documentation program in the world for historic buildings. Established in 1933 as a make-work initiative for struggling architects, it quickly embraced photography as a documentation tool. It set out to record "a complete resume of the builder's art," and the program proved so valuable that it has endured to this day and spawned two other documentation programs: the Historic American Engineering Record and the Historic American Landscapes Survey. The photography standards quickly settled on black and white, large and all photographs needed to meet a 500-year life expectancy. Stephen Schafer has been practicing this archival photographic process to capture sites in California as diverse as an 1840s adobe and a Cold-War stealth ship. This presentation will show documentations of historic properties both saved and lost, and explain the HABS process as it has evolved since 1933.
Stephen Schafer (“Schäf”) blends his love of photography and his passion for historic preservation by specializing in the photographic documentation of historic structures for inclusion in the Library of Congress. He does work for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) collections, documenting threatened homes, buildings, engineering and landscapes. Mr. Schafer opened his commercial photography studio in Ventura in 1989 and has been working and teaching in Southern California ever since. His photographs have been used in books, magazines and nominations to the National Register of Historic Places. His photographic equipment is a hybrid of digital cameras and analog large format technical cameras shooting 4×5 and 5×7 inch film. In 2016 he wrote the humorous book: Don’t Shoot – 66 reasons Not to Become a professional Photographer.
Presented by the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. Sponsored by Photo Friends.
Seating is first come, first serve. Doors open approximately 15 minutes before the start of the program.