Archives West Finding Aid

The William Evans Lawrence Photographs consist of images taken by Lawrence of various locations in Oregon, California, and Nevada and three log books describing the images.

About half of the images were taken in California, where Lawrence spent a sabbatical year in 1942-1943. In addition to views of Stanford University, the California images also include Golden Gate Park, Shasta Dam, Lassen Park, the University of California in Berkeley, and the San Francisco World's Fair. The collection also includes images of Oregon landscapes -- such as the Oregon coast, Mount Hood, vegetation in the vicinity of the Marys River, and the Dallas region -- as well as the Oregon State College campus. The Oregon State campus views include images of the campus iris garden.

The log books were used by Lawrence to record the location, date, and camera settings for the photographs he made. The log books list the photographs in chronological order. Lawrence assigned a number to each entry in the log books; these correspond to numbers found on most of the slides held in this collection. Lawrence indicated in the log book if the image was discarded and the reason (e.g. over- or under-exposure, poor contrast, or inaccurate color). The log books cover the following time periods: Book No. I - 1938 to March 1941; Book No. II - April 1941 to June 20, 1943; Book No. III - June 20, 1943 to December 25, 1946.

The collection includes 1,145 color slides and 42 b/w negatives. All of the slides are 35 mm; some are in glass mounts. The negatives are 35 mm black-and-white. Most of the images are arranged in groups by topic.