Draft:Alexander J. Stark

Alexander J. Stark (April 10, 1889– March 17, 1967) also known as Zan Stark, was an American commercial photographer. He is best known as a pioneer publisher of real photo postcards. He published under the name Zan of Tamalpais. Stark printed postcards in Mill Valley, California for 30 years.

Early life
Stark was born on April 10, 1889, in Michigan, and brought up in Cincinnati, before moving out west in 1912. On January 24, 1925, Stark married Vivian Getty in San Francisco, and had one son. Stark and Vivian divorced and after ten years of marriage. He remarried to Katherine Franklin Greenman of Sausalito in 1936 in Marin County, California.

Career


In 1914, Stark moved from Michigan to San Francisco and invested in a small theater lantern business under the name "Xan Stark, Alta Studios." In the early 1920s, Stark released several editions of Alta Art Studies, series featuring photographic prints of female nudes. Two of the Alta S.F. models, Olive Ann Alcorn and Laura La Plante, went on to pursue careers in film.

During World War I, Stark was drafted into the US. Army in 1918, serving in the 91st Division and rising to the rank of sergeant to the 348th Machine Gun Battalion.

Following the war, Stark returned to California in 1921 and partnered with his brother to establish the Stark Bros. Alta Slide & Photo Co. in San Francisco. Following the death of his brother, and due to the economic impact of the Great Depression, he closed his shop in San Francisco. In 1932, Stark moved to Mill Valley, California, where he established a studio and began and offering photo finishing and other photographic services. He sought to capture photographs suitable for postcards, marketing them locally. Stark expanded his photography to encompass Marin County, then across the bay, and eventually to distant locations. As the area and sales volume expanded, his scenic photographic postcards became known under the name Zan of Tamalpais.

In the 1930s, Stark formed a partnership with Lloyd Perkins. Together, they produced thousands of real photo postcards capturing much of California, with Perkins overseeing sales and Stark handling the photography. On the back the photo postcard, the type of photographic paper used for development, such as Kodak, was indicated.

Between 1932 and 1952, Stark traveled and photographed the California coast, capturing scenes from Monterey County, Big Sur, along the Redwood Highway, and throughout Northern California up to Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, resulting in the creation of thousands of postcards. From 1936, Stark was the official photographer of the Redwood Empire Association.

In 1948, the business had sold 5,000,000 postcards. Stark's earliest postcards were inscribed with "zS" numbers and captions. Later, he adopted "Zan" along with the number sequence.

At his Mill Valley facility, he had the capacity to produce 10,000 black and white prints per day with the help of an automatic printer. The transition from black and white to color postcards took place in the late 1940s. One of his largest orders came at the end of World War II, when Southern Pacfic Company commissioned half a million cards.

In 1948, Stark became involved in Mill Valley city politics as secretary of Locust Merchants Association and was successful as lobbyist for district improvments. He won a seat on the city council in April 1950 for a four year term. In October 1952, Stark resigned as city councilman and moved to Boyes Hot Springs in Sonoma County to join his son in publishing the now defunct Valley of the Moon Review, a daily newspaper.

Death and legacy
Stark died on March 17, 1967, at a rest home in Sonoma, California.