In 1990 the Canadian Centre for Architecture acquired a copy of Eadweard Muybridge's rare mammoth-plate "Panorama of San Francisco from California Street Hill." Made in 1878 from the top of the Mark Hopkins mansion, this 360-degree photograph of the city, over five metres in length, was not only a remarkable technical achievement but a high point in the history of city view-making.

Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, 1850-1880 is the first work to study Muybridge's panorama in depth, providing a context in which to situate and appreciate his achievement. By examining the panoramas of San Francisco made from Nob Hill by Muybridge as well as George Fardon, Charles L. Weed, and Carleton Watkins, this publication brings to light the complex aims and unique qualities of these objects, revealing as well the vital nature of the city that was their subject.

David Harris, curator of the exhibition which this publication accompanies, examines in his essay the photographer's role in creating and imposing an aesthetic order upon the apparent haphazardness of the city, concentrating upon the technical and conceptual issues involved in making panoramas as well as the social and promotional uses which they served.

In another essay Eric Sandweiss examines the rhetoric of "destiny" in the remarkable history of San Francisco, one of the world's most rapidly formed great cities. Was San Francisco truly "inevitable"? Sandweiss explores the question by examining cultural settlement patterns and the influence of topography, money, and status. A fully illustrated catalogue provides complete documentation of all the objects treated.

Great care has been taken in the reproduction of all the panoramas, so as to preserve as much as possible the intent behind them, often lost when reproduced piecemeal or on separate pages. Until now, very few have ever been adequately reproduced, owing to the complexities of presenting in book form panoramas of such detail and length.

This is the first work to attempt this systematically, and to make possible a comparison of all the major creations in this thirty-year history of San Francisco's photographic panoramas, a period of the rise of a city and photography alike.