The street studio portraits in “White Center” were made between 2001 and 2019 in White Center, Washington, a working-class neighborhood south of Seattle. It is diverse in a way much of Seattle is not.

Those who joined me in making these images are much like the people I worked with on the Boeing factory floor. I photographed barbers, housekeepers, restaurant employees, small business owners, baristas, construction, airport and postal workers, teachers, and others. I often set up a backdrop and chairs to create an outdoor studio.

This handmade artist book was designed and created with Sarah Maker in the summer of 2023 at Editions, a bookmaking studio. The loose leaf book contains 16 archival pigment prints by Ahlberg. 

Lisa Ahlberg is a Seattle based portrait and documentary photographer interested in people’s relationship to place.

Lisa has been an airplane inspector and structures mechanic, gardener, floral arranger, truck assembler, textile and garment worker. For many years she has been involved in the struggles of working people and unionists. These experiences inform her work.

She is a 2005 graduate of the Photographic Center Northwest. From 2009 – 2015, she was a member of its Board of Directors, and its president. She is current chair of the PCNW Alumni Association Steering Committee.

She exhibited her work from White Center including her solo show Rat City Streets, this past spring and summer at Seattle’s new Solas Gallery.