A Legacy of Unique Photographs
This webpage was designed to provide a brief introduction to a unique archive of aerial photography produced by the Aero-Geodetic Corporation of San Jose, California.
Aero-Geodetic Corporation was one of the largest and best-equipped privately-owned photogrammetric firms in the United States. Founded in January, 1969, this company was created by Bozidar “Bob” Raznatovich, an immigrant from Montenegro (then part of Yugoslavia) who escaped communism through political asylum, arriving in the United States in 1957. He originally settled in Phoenix, Arizona, and would later move to San Jose in 1962, where he would build his empire.
By the time he created this company, originally known as Santa Clara Aerial Surveys, he already had 20 years of experience in surveying and mapping, working with municipal, subdivision, and highway projects in the field of civil engineering, as well as mining and metallurgical engineering.
For over thirty years, Bob Raznatovich led his company with an unsurpassed reputation for high quality, service, and integrity. Consistently upgrading as modern geodetic and photogrammetric technology continued to evolve, the Aero-Geodetic Corporation catered to the needs of civil engineers, planners, architects, environmentalists, geologists, mining engineers, and other professionals.
The Aero-Geodetic Corporation offered their clients the benefits of world-wide experience and was proud to employ a staff that included “people from every part of the globe.”
Aero-Geodetic provided services in Santa Clara County, San Francisco County, Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, Solano County, Alameda County, Marin County, and Contra Costa County.
In 2000, Bob Raznatovich retired, appointing his son John Raznatovich as the president. John was the perfect choice to run this family business, as he not only grew up learning many of the skills from his father, but also graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Fresno State University.
John could do it all – whether it was filling out the proper documents, operating the cameras, creating maps, processing films or flying the planes, John had all the skills to run this company.
Three years later, Bob passed away, and John became the owner of the company.
The following years turned out to be extremely challenging. The world was transitioning to the newfound tools of GPS navigation, satellite mapping services, the powers of internet search engines, and the widespread use of drone-based cameras. While the options of a sustainable future for Aero-Geodetic Corporation were quickly shrinking, the company experienced yet another tragedy in 2012 when John Raznatovich discovered he had malignant tumors.
Two years after the prognosis, John Raznatovich died of cancer and the Aero-Geodetic Corporation shut down forever in 2014.
With the the dissolution of the Aero-Geodetic Corporation, we are left with a significant collection of aerial photographs, which includes over 400 rolls of 10”x10” black & white negatives, assorted color transparencies, various photo prints, a paper database of information, some hard drives and some light tables.
We are hoping to find a home for all of this.