Bradley and Rulofson

Bradley & Rulofson was a partnership between photographers Henry W Bradley (1813–1891), a native of North Carolina, and Canadian-born William H Rulofson (1826–1878). Rulofson had arrived in California during the gold rush, and after a year of prospecting near Sonora acquired for himself a daguerreotype wagon with which he and a partner travelled from town to town, taking portraits of miners. He moved to San Francisco in 1861 and in 1863 went into business with Bradley, who’d been working in San Francisco since 1850. Their Montgomery Street ‘Photographic Art Gallery’ became known for its luxurious studio facilities, which included a grand piano, hydraulic lift, a ‘magnificent Reception Room, Toilet Room and Sitting Room’ and the ‘Largest Sky Light in America.’ Rulofson, who managed the ‘Portrait Gallery’ side of the business, photographed numerous performers and members of the Bohemian Club, along with various other luminaries who visited San Francisco. In the early 1860s, having won the contract to photograph San Francisco’s defence facilities at Fort Alcatraz and Fort Point, the pair became embroiled in a scandal in which they were accused of being Confederate spies. During the 1870s, they issued a series of Eadweard Muybridge’s views of Yosemite, the studio’s prestige increasing with Rulofson’s appointment to the presidency of the National Photographic Association in 1874. Rulofson died in a fall from the roof of the studio in November 1878. His partnership with Bradley had dissolved amidst financial woes in 1877, but the studio continued to trade for some years under the Bradley & Rulofson name.