Mr. Benjamin Chinn, a Galileo alumni from the class of '39, gave a special presentation on his photography on San Francisco 's Chinatown in the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum and Learning Center on the 25 th of last month.

The exhibition of Mr. Chinn's photographs began on January 7 and will be on display until May 31. The photographs are being exhibited at the Chinese historical Society of America Museum and Learning Center located at the former YWCA site in San Francisco 's Chinatown .

This collection has never been displayed before to the public and they are from Mr. Chinn's own private collection of photos. These pictures captured images of Chinatown 's daily life from the 40s and 50s.

Mr. Chinn said that the way the photos were developed has now become obsolete. The photo paper he processed his photos on in contained silver, which allowed the photographs to show clear details even in the darker regions. Subsequently, photographs were dipped into a gold solution, which leaves a very thin layer of gold on the paper to prevent oxidation.

Mr. Benjamin Chinn was born and raised in San Francisco 's Chinatown . He attended Commodore Stockton Elementary (now Gordon J. Lau Elementary), Francisco Junior High (now Francisco Middle) and Galileo when he was young. After graduating from Galileo, he went to UC Berkeley.

Mr. Chinn was an aerial photographer in the United States Air Force in Hawaii from 1943-1946 during Second World War. After the War, he returned to studying art and enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Later, he went to France and studied at the L'Acadieme Juliane with sculptor Alberto Giacometti near Paris.

Some of the famous artists that Mr. Chinn has studied under: Ansel Adams, Monor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Richard Diebenkorn and Dorr Bothwell.

Mr. Chinn is still taking photos in his spare time with a recently purchased state-of –the-art camera.

A snippet from a photo featuring a young boy by Mr. Benjamin Chinn