THE SUSAN PARISH COLLECTION

JOURNEY A SHADOW CATCHER & PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTOR

My interest in photography began in childhood. My Dad was an avid still photographer and also made 8mm movies.  As I was uncomfortable being his subject I got out of it by taking over the camera myself.  It was much easier to be the one 'shooting' than the one 'shot'.  And, the power!  I could order my subject to freeze and smile or move and they did what I instructed ~ most of the time.

It also allowed me access.  To people, events and even to the forefront of the crowd. The camera allowed me to indulge my curiosity.

I find a lot of photographer's are curious people who like to just 'look' at things. Children learn by looking and often stare at things and people but are told not to.  But, with a camera in hand...even if no photos are taken...we can often get away with it.  Then we are 'recording' and somehow that's more acceptable behavior.

Some, like me, are shy in our youth and it became a way to be there in the midst of things...but, not really noticed.

I bought my first camera by sending in cereal box tops in 1957. I still have it and it still works. A little plastic black box taken in design after the larger glass plate cameras of the past and similar to a Diana camera so popular today.

My first photo-shoot that really gave me big ideas was of Janis Joplin in concert in Seattle in 1967.  My favorite was of Raymond Burr who I documented while on a movie set; I was also his chauffer and that is another short story itself.

My interest in darkroom work began while living on the Olympic Peninsula going to Jr college there. A close friend was the photographer for the local paper and a boyfriend was a photographer in the Coast Guard. We used to 'see what developed' in the amber light and I fell in love with both.  I have been a working photographer ever since although I was studying drawing and sculpture. Journalism and humanities studies followed when I went onto Evergreen State College in Olympia.

My interest in historical photographs and history began much much later and is one of those things that God brings you.  I like to tell kids when I do photo shows in schools that I flunked Washington State history twice because it was soooo boring. They didn't have pictures in the books of a history I could relate to.

Pictures are Real...they tell Everything.

When I purchased the Jeffers Studio Collection  I had been working in various fields of photography & communications professionally for about 11 years - shooting everything as a freelancer must do. I won photo  art contests when I entered but I have never been that interested in contests. I shot to make a living and because I loved the adventures freelancing afforded.  Only recently have I made landscapes.

I have held many jobs in communications over the years; photo-journalist, freelance photographer (preferring to shoot model portfolios over political brochures and Golf Tournaments and Tug Boat Races over Weddings). I was a newspaper editor, a tour guide, I've taught history and wrote many programs and grants and my last job working for anyone else was as a Visitor Services Director at Washington's State Capitol.  Although I am in arts management, I still think of myself as a photo-journalist.

I bought the Jeffers Studio archives which contained approximately 200,000 glass and film negatives as well as original prints covering a period of 75 years on the spur of the moment.  I was working at the Capitol for the Legislature and on a Humanities Grant project to make a touring exhibit on the early women legislators of Washington State.  Jeffers Studio had taken most of the early photos of the Capitol. When I learned it all could be purchased...I jumped in head first having no idea what I was doing only that I must.

Most negatives are large format (5 x 7 and 8 x 10) and a joy to print.  Large negatives are so strikingly clear and these were so perfectly executed, I immediately recognized that I was printing from the creations of very gifted and talented photographers. In the darkroom I began to truly comprehend the long term value of a photograph.

I was transported into other times and places and it was another life-changing experience.  Time became opaque, multi-layered with shadows of people and places that had been in this plain of existence before me and they all had lives and stories to tell.  It is time travel and it is magical to view into a photograph.  All sighted beings learn visually and it is a most powerful tool that we take for granted.

Once my curiosity was whetted in visual history...I just continued the journey down the rabbit hole and it has lead me into most wonderful places.  Once I began to use my journalism honed research skills to discover the stories behind the photographers, the photographs and the people and places and events in them one mystery led to another...and it just has never stopped.  I am an avid time traveler now.

I realized that I had finally come to the place where all my seemingly disparate interests and studies had come together and I knew that I had found my niche, my path, my calling, my purpose and I knew I had been blessed.

I also soon learned the importance, the urgency, the time needed in devotion to purpose such as being a collector -  as well as the cost - in time and money - of protecting and preserving a photographic archives.  Over the ensuing years, I have rescued, taken in and purchased everything I could as each destroyed photo of something or someone was like a piece of reality.  As a picture improperly 'fixed' fades from view, the person the thing the time the place...takes its lesson with it when it goes. 

The was fortunate to acquire the photo archives of C. R. Jensen and the negatives of Mary Mires when I apprenticed with this collector.  I purchased Merle Junk, dba Silvertone Photo Co., and Ron Allen's archives when Mr. Allen retired. 

Ron actually called me just before Christmas one year when I was standing in my kitchen wringing my hands having no money for presents for my 2 children. What was I doing?  I had no money to take on such a pursuit and had then and there convinced myself that I must leave photography behind and pursue something more stable and lucrative. 

Ron said he was retiring and was selling off his negatives. As I tried to convince him that not only did I not have any room in my house for more but I didn't have any money to buy anything from him.  That my kids were getting worried their Mom was crazy, our home was filled already.  And, I was getting scared...it was so much responsibility.  But, he said he would work it out with me.

When I asked why he called me instead of a museum or someone else more 'important'.  What he said took me totally by surprise. He said, money wasn't the issue.   "Because you are the Gate Keeper. You are keeping the memories of our community alive.  Everyone knows you are the one to do this and I want you to continue.  I know that you will take care of the photographs and I know that you will share them and exhibit them". 

He convinced me to come and take a look and then decide. And, he had a surprise a deal cincher. He also had Merle Junk's archives. Merle was another career photographer and his negatives went back the the early 1920's.  He wouldn't take no for an answer and I told him I would come over and take a look in the morning. 

And, of course I left with 150+ more boxes of negatives packed into my old Toyota pickup. Wondering what I was doing and knowing then that this was my calling and Ron's call was the answer to my asking. What am I supposed to do?

Every time I think I can't possibly go on....somebody shows me a picture and tells me a story. Every time I think I can't go on and should get a real 9 to 5 job...someone tells me, "Thanks for all you do for our community". And, I jump into the rabbit hole again.

I've purchased most of my collection - sometimes one at a time - sometimes thousands at a time.  But, surprisingly, many photographs and negatives have been donated by people who support what I am doing and want to see these Windows to the Past preserved as much as I do. 

Their encouragement keeps me going when times are tough and my pocketbook is empty, which is most of the time, and I rarely bemoan the path I've chosen.  When I hear someone tell a story using the photos to jog their memory, or hear a grandpa tell his grandchild 'how it used to be' and know I have a path that is good. Or worse, another horror story about entire collections being destroyed or thrown away from lack of caring or foresight. Then I realize that what I do is valuable and is a right livelihood if not a calling. 

I've continued my own photography and studied history, collection management, photographic preservation, etc. as managing such a large private archives without the benefit of any public funding or institutional affiliation has been a large challenge but private industry and private sales have kept us afloat albeit sometimes....adrift.

In reality I am selfish. I do what I love. Through my work and its web into the community...I have made a deep connection to and discovered respect and bonded with my community and its' citizens. I see where we come from.  This connects me to my own soul and makes me a more satisfied and knowledgeable person. 

Native Americans called photographers, "Shadow Catchers", believing the black boxes they pointed at them caught their "shadow", or spirit. They are said to believe that a part of them was taken from them. My experience tells me this true. For as long as an image survives of a person, place or event that others can look upon ~ it still exists on some level. And, what we see we bring to mind and what is in the mind is real.  Quantum physics has some very interesting theories on this subject. But, what the Bleep do I know?

I do know that images from the past help the viewer see through windows of time and space and virtually - whether it was 100 years or 100 seconds ago - go there and with a good imagination....you can experience being there.

It can be and has been for me an adventurous, magical and mysterious journey with never ending stories to reveal and many things to learn from who and what is in pictures. We are discovering this way of learning and communicating. 

I can see why it still makes people nervous to be in front of a camera - I don't like it either. With the advent of digital photography I am afraid that photo of me in my fat pants....could be the only surviving picture of me my great great great grandkids will ever see !

As I grow older and go to other lands, I realize the uniqueness of my Pacific Northwest heritage - whether that is personal, social or cultural - and, I want to share what I have learned and help to preserve some of it for the generations to come - - because it is so rapidly changing here. There are so few structures of history left in my town.  The waterfront of sawmills and tugboats is gone and mostly forgotten.

I have come to feel strongly that a community's visual history should not only be preserved but easily accessible to the people of the community especially and displayed in the most assessable places possible. Places we visit each day so these images can be viewed and enjoyed as we go about our lives.  Not just in Museums that we have to make an appointment to visit and out of context.  Our history is comforting and satisfies a deep longing we have to be part of something larger, something more stable than just our own fleeting life. Time is like a fast moving river and through photos we can slow it down and look at it and think about it.  We learn a lot from the visual language of photography.

I believe in "museums without walls" and I enjoy creating visual exhibits in uncommon places like restaurants, banks and any other publicly assessable and common location  ~ so everyone can enjoy them ~ without paying or even having to go out of their way to view them.  

Photography is a form of communication that everyone understands and assimilates easily.  When we see through our Windows to the Soul, we learn on more levels than just reading words.

I am only a caretaker of these images of the past.  My responsibility is to save as many good ones as I can, adding some of my own photos to my collection - and, pass them on for future generations to enjoy. I am currently looking for that home. Your comments are welcome...

 Thank You for your interest and support of this Archives and in the Preservation of Historical Photography.