Ask HN: Any good Silicon Valley Photo coffee table books? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any good Silicon Valley Photo coffee table books?

71 pointsvclouder46 comments

Has anyone come across any good photo books of Silicon Valley from the past or present. I love looking back and reliving those early days of the valley and like to see how it has transformed.

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Not a book, and a bit self promotional, but I have a small photo series I worked on https://mkaz.com/silicon-valley/

Also, look for Silicon Valley '07 by Gabriele Basilico, it's a photo book - not a huge coffee table book but pretty good with about 80-100 photos from 2007

I love your exterior building shots. Is that film, filters, or post processing (if you don’t mind)?

Thanks! The majority of them are digital, most with a Fujifilm camera either X-T1 or X-PRO2 depending on when they were taken. I do shoot a fair amount of film, so a couple will be Kodak Portra. I prefer the film aesthetic so my digital presets aim for that look.

I got a X-T1 about 6 months ago from eBay for around 250€. It does a wonderful job of films simulation. Still very surprised that a 10year old camera can take such wonderful pictures.

Love it, thanks for sharing.

I love this! Amazing work!

Nice work. That Sun Microsystems one should be the same as the Facebook one, but the back of that sign ;) (as I see you've included in the FB writeup. Good show)

I like your photos, but you should use small thumbnail images, instead of having the browser scale the full size images to thumbnail size.

Probably, looks like I'm going to hit my bandwidth limits on Vercel hobby tier. ;-)

Very nice.. There's a lot of history in some of those buildings

I really love this. It makes me feel weirdly nostalgic, even though I've never been to California, or indeed the US. As a tech-obsessed teenager in the 90s, some of the older companies here felt almost mythical at the time. Plus lots of California generally would show up in so much pop culture, films, music videos and so on, and the sort of vintage-y vibe I'm getting here feels really reminiscent of that.

I bought San Francisco Dream (Yoko Takahashi) a while back. It had a lot of photos that reminded me of what it felt like when I had just moved here.

Possibly not an answer to your question, but just in case someone else reading finds it interesting.

https://leicastoresf.com/collections/lssf-photobooks/product...

i am not 100% sure, but i think this one was the same one I browsed in a waiting room once and it was pretty cool -> https://www.siliconvalleysmarts.com/silicon-valley-book

Awesome, looks good. Thank you

Are you _in_ Silicon Valley? I ask because I remember that when I was in Bells Books on Emerson in Palo Alto a month or two ago they had a display of Silicon Valley themed books that I think had a few different coffee table books. I had a chat with the person at the counter about them when he saw me browsing them.

I think the book suggested above was among them, but there were definitely a few more. Some (not all) of them may have been ‘old’ - but I think ‘old’ Silicon Valley books may be what you’re after?

If you’re nearby maybe go and take a look and/or ask the staff members there? (Or maybe someone reading this can and report back here? :-)

To really understand it's changes, you first need a book with pictures of the valley from the 1940's to the 1960's. I don't have such a book but I've seen a number of pictures when the valley was all orchards. Then you overlay those with modern day pictures and you see how places like Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto transformed into large cities that essentially removed those trees and replaced them with buildings, houses, and roads. I could study those pictures for hours.

I suppose print-on-demand services are cheap enough that you could put together your own fairly easily. Flickr has very permissive licensing by default, if you wanted to make it available for others, too.

At Half Price Books in Fremont, there's an entire shelf dedicated to these local history books.

Some of my favorites:

https://www.amazon.com/Palo-Alto-Centennial-Ward-Winslow/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Menlo-Park-California-Beyond-Gate/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Seabright-Images-America-Arcadia-Publ...

In fact, the Images of America series is exactly what you're looking for, think.

https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/collections/images-of-amer...

Check out “Songbook” by Alec Soth. He’s an amazing photographer, and while the book isn’t exclusively Silicon Valley, there’s some great photos of various campuses and areas that feel timeless.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/justinesharrock/silicon...

https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/books/songbook...

I haven’t read it in physical form, but maybe Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made by Andy Hertzfeld?

AFAICT it’s based on the stories from https://folklore.org/, so I ought to be good.

You can see how it looks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMExWOBvmho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_in_the_Valley

Same. Let's work on publishing one. I am happy to fund it.

My photos linked above are licensed under creative commons, so feel free to use any. I'd be interested in helping with the project too and can supply higher res if needed.

They are terrific. Thank you for sharing and licensing under CC.

Is this license information on your website somewhere? I'm not seeing it on any of the pages for your pictures.

I think I might of lost it over various site migrations. I added it back to About page.

Does anyone have any tips for moving to the valley at a young age?

I'm very young, not from the US and looking to move to the valley to be around more ambitious people.

Any tips or things I should know? Neighbourhoods to consider? Areas to be in? What to avoid? How to meet people? Hidden gems?

Just go to the coffee shops and meet people :)

Thank you!

Maybe your question is worth its own thread. Your biggest hurdle will be immigrating to the US. As far as I know the best way to manage that would be to finish your studies in the US. If you're from Canada I believe getting a visa is easier. Many cities/countries have good startup cultures nowadays, and SV is no longer the only option to get started!

Thank you for this. I appreciate your input. I started a thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39205494].

I am from Canada and do have US family.

If you're from Canada your best bet is to get an engineering degree and to land a job with a startup. Look into the TN Visa for Canadians. There are no limits on application numbers and they're very easy to get (if you have a qualifying degree).

Will do. Thank you very much!

This book has a lot of great Bay Area photos from the 50s-60s:

https://www.amazon.com/Mid-Century-Bay-Celebration-Francisco...

I enjoyed the photo book of SF by Victoria Smith

https://www.amazon.co.uk/See-San-Francisco-Through-SFGirlbyB...

I highly recommend "Silicon Valley: The History In Pictures" by Mary Wadden

Edit: (Written in conjunction with the Silicon Valley Historical Association)

https://shifthappens.site

Look up “San Jose signs project” or the San Francisco one.

The HP Way ?

A bit of an aside. But I would love a book on the comprehensive history of silicon valley up to and describing the crisis we face today of housing and everyone leaving.

> the crisis we face today of housing and everyone leaving

Well, which is it? ;)

Both

Nobody goes there, it's too crowded.

So, I bought this and haven’t actually read it yet, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt, but I’ve _heard_ that this, from 2017, is good: https://www.amazon.com/Peopling-Silicon-Valley-1940-Present/...

I read this ages ago and it was good, but it’s 24 years old now: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Silicon-Valley-Entrepre...

The book would be short. The “me generation” takes control, zeroes interest rates after they crash the world economy in 2008. Roll the clock forward 10 years, nimbyism plus importing cheap labor and allowing the housing market to be used as a Ponzi scheme because who cares about younger generations as long as the children of the 60s can buy vanity wineries, and all own multi-million dollar homes, drive corvettes or whatever Biden is ridin.

I'm still waiting on my winery and my Corvette, but maybe that's because I was born in the 1950s.

You had me up until the very end

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