Puck, Charles C.

Biographical/Historical Note

There is little information on Charles Puck beyond the basic facts that he resided in Los Angeles for many years and worked in the city as a postal employee. Puck used his leisure hours to indulge his twin passions for regional history and photography. From 1914 until 1958, Puck set out with his camera to record many facets of life in Southern California. Puck occasionally supplied photographs to commercial photographer Charles C. Pierce, who ran a business providing stock pictures of Southern California to a variety of organizations and publishers. Consequently, Puck’s photographs have often been incorrectly attributed to Pierce in various publications and periodicals of the era.

A devoted member of the Historical Society of Southern California, Puck began giving his 11,400 photographs and negatives to that institution in 1948. Photographs trickled in for the next decade, with a final donation of three large cartons from Puck’s estate in 1969.

In the forward of a 1926 scrapbook, Charles Puck expressed the driving motivation behind his work: “Noting how rapidly the old landmarks were disappearing, the writer set forth with camera to record these last remnants of a time that will never again come and it is hoped that these pictures…will be an educational contribution.”

The Puck Collection comprises one portion of the Historical Society of Southern California (HSSC) Collection, which was donated to the Huntington Library in 1992. The HSSC Collection as a whole contains approximately 15,000 photographs and negatives covering the period circa 1870 to circa 1980, and almost exclusively depicts Southern California. As such, it is an important visual record of the growth and history of the region.

From the guide to the Historical Society of Southern California Collection -- Charles C. Puck Collection of Negatives and Photographs, 1864-1963, (bulk 1920s-1950s), (The Huntington Library)