[Extensively Annotated Photograph Album Documenting Travel Around the World, Including California, Hawaii, Panama, China, and More]

[Various locations], 1924. Very good.. [65] leaves, illustrated with 329 photographs between 2.5 x 1.75 inches and 5 x 7 inches, plus a small selection of ephemeral items. Oblong quarto. Contemporary limp black cloth photograph album, string tied. Minor scuffing to edges, some rubbing to boards. A wide-ranging annotated vernacular photograph album documenting the worldwide travels of Robert E. Lien of California. The album opens with an interesting manuscript note pasted in by the compiler, reading: "This Album is the Property of Robert e. Lien. Please do not rub your hands over the white ink, it rubs off." The photographs begin in Edison County, California, showing the landscape of the Sierra mountains, local buildings and businesses, orange growers in Yuba, an oil well fire in Santa Fe Springs, aerial views of San Francisco, views of the wrecked Union Oil tanker Lyman Stewart, and more. The California images account for roughly the first third of the album. One image of a steamship gives a clue to Lien's career, with the caption reading: "My home for 14 months. S.S. Columbia." Other images show Lien dressed in ship's officer gear, so he was perhaps a captain or sailor on oceangoing oil tankers. This would account for his keen interest in ships and boats, which feature prominently in numerous images in the present album, which were presumably taken by Lien while he was on the Columbia. Lien also visited numerous locations around the world which he documents in the album, with several images in the Panama Canal; shots of locals and other scenes in Manzanilla, Mexico and Corinto, Nicaragua; scenes in Melbourne, Newcastle, and Sydney, Australia; images of locals and local color in Saigon, Shanghai, and the Philippines; and more. Lien's detailed manuscript captions throughout provide vital identifications of locations, settings, and names for individuals he both knew and met along the way around the world.