1872 Gabriel Moulin is born in San Jose, California of German and French parents.

1884 Moulin Family moves to San Francisco, California. At the age of twelve Gabriel Moulin apprentices with Isaac W. Tabor, the City's leading photographer.

1894 Gabriel photographs the Midwinter Fair in Golden Gate Park for Isaac Taber's studio.

1898 Gabriel is asked to photograph the Bohemian Club's encampment on the Russian River and to make studies of the majestic redwood trees along the California coastline.

Shortly before 1900 Gabriel left Taber to join in partnership with R.J. Waters & Co.

This association lasted until the Great Earthquake of 1906 when he struck out on his own. He recorded the devastation and rebirth of the City from his new studio at the corner of Kearny and Sutter streets. Even though the Fire had destroyed many of Gabriel's early negatives he found and identified a great many of his original prints. From these prints he was able to make copy negatives and restored the images. To this day Moulin Archives has the most complete collection of more than 100,000 images depicting the development of the Bay Area from the late 1800's to the present day. Gabriel's sons Irving and Raymond, and grandson Tom, have contributed to this collection.

1915 Gabriel is commisioned to photograph the Panama-Pacific Exposition in the newly created Treasure Island.

1923 Irving, Gabriel's older son, joins the family business.

1930 Raymond, Gabriel's younger son, joins his brother and father at the studios.

1933 Irving pioneers the use of photography for retail advertising in San Francisco. One of Raymond's images was used on a postage stamp issued in 1938.

Mid 1930's Moulin Studio's is commisioned to photograph the building of both the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Another stamp made from a Moulin image was the 25 cent stamp of A. P. Giannini, founder of Bank of America.

Gabriel Moulin dies in 1945, after more than sixty years as a photographer. He had seen his beloved City through the most dynamic phase of its growth, and had watched it grow from a boisterous boomtown to a cosmopolitan metropolis. After Gabriel's death Irving and Raymond continue on the tradition of excellent photography.

1949 Raymond's oldest son, Tom, begins working in the family business. And in 1974 Raymond turns over the family business to him.

 

Gabriel taught his sons, who in turn taught their sons, to look at nature or a scene on the street and reconginze in it the balance of elements that create a beautiful photograph. Strength of light and shadow and the dimention created by it has always been a characteristic of Moulin photography.