A New Look at Photo History:
Treasures from the Solander Collection

The history of photography is often told as a chain of relationships connecting one great maker to the next. However, the real history is much more complicated—a vast collection of interconnected stories stretching from East Asia to West Africa, from New Zealand to Turkey, and combining fine art, scientific, anthropological, documentary, and amateur traditions.

Featuring a selection of 50 extraordinary works, A New Look at Photo History: Treasures from the Solander Collection provides a rare opportunity to see well-known works and new discoveries by major artists alongside forgotten greats, regional champions and unknown artists.

Unexpected images by legendary figures including Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston are seen alongside vintage examples from China, India, Mexico, Mali, Poland, and others of early, unknown practitioners. The American West is seen through the eyes of indigenous artist Richard Throssel (also known by his Crow name Esh Quon Dupahs), while a gender non-conforming individual is shown by Japanese photographer Katsumi Watanabi. The exhibition contains many rarities and “firsts” and spans photography’s early decades with linchpin pictures by Timothy O’Sullivan and Julia Margaret Cameron, among others.

In addition to providing a touchstone for conversations about new perspectives in art history, A New Look at Photo History: Treasures from the Solander Collection engages with educational themes including colonialism, gender, class, privilege and racial and ethnic identity.

All works in this exhibition come from the Oregon and California-based Solander Collection, one of the pre-eminent private collections of photography in the country. The collection, dedicated to under-appreciated artists and international practitioners with a special attention to women, is making its Seattle debut. Photographs are vintage (made within a few years of the negative) and chosen to be among the best prints of each image in existence. The aim of the collection is to broaden the understanding of photographic history through an inclusive and democratic lens.