Seattle Camera Club photographs, approximately 1920-1939

Overview of the Collection

Collector
Seattle Camera Club
Title
Seattle Camera Club photographs
Dates
approximately 1920-1939 (inclusive)
Quantity
32 photographic prints (1 box and 1 folder) ; sizes vary
Collection Number
PH1234
Summary
The collection includes mainly pictorialist-style photos from different members of the Seattle Camera Club as well as non-members.
Repository
University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA
98195-2900
Telephone: 2065431929
Fax: 2065431931
speccoll@uw.edu
Access Restrictions

Entire collection can be viewed on the Libraries’ Digital Collections website. Permission of Visual Materials Curator is required to view originals. Contact Special Collections for more information.

Request at UW

Languages
English

Historical NoteReturn to Top

In the mid-1920s a group of immigrant Japanese-American Pictorialist photographers in Seattle came together to form the Seattle Camera Club (SCC) in order to share their love of photography. While the club only lasted from 1924-1929, it was amazingly successful. Members exhibited their work all over the world and their photographs were widely published and won many awards. Sadly, most of their work was lost over time for various reasons, including the internment of the Japanese during WW II. The activities of SCC photographers paralleled those of members of Japanese immigrant photography clubs in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the SCC was distinguished by its enthusiastic and successful efforts to recruit non-Japanese members and by its monthly journal, Notan , which more than any other factor preserved SCC activities for posterity. Despite the pervasive racism that prevented Japanese immigrants from gaining citizenship, the work of SCC members was well received, finding prizes, purchasers, and general acclaim. Acknowledging the prominence of West Coast camera club photographers, the editor of the 1928 American Annual of Photography wrote, "the influence of this group on our Pacific coast has put a lasting mark on photography in this country, the repercussions of which are echoing throughout the world.” The word "Pictorialist" was used to describe both the photographic style as well as the photographer who used the medium for artistic expression. The range of styles associated with Pictorialism followed parallel painting trends such as Tonalism, Symbolism, and especially Impressionism whose preoccupation with transient light effects was perfectly suited to photography. To achieve their results, the photographic artists used innovative darkroom techniques and processes to manipulate their negatives and prints into unique compositions that were compatible with their contemporaries in the fields of painting and printmaking.

Source: Nicolette Bromberg: Shadows of a Fleeting World .

Content DescriptionReturn to Top

The collection includes mainly pictorialist-style photos from different members of the Seattle Camera Club as well as non-members. (Larger collections of work by members of the Seattle Camera Club exist as separate collections.)

Use of the CollectionReturn to Top

Alternative Forms Available

View the digital version of the collection

Restrictions on Use

Restrictions may exist on reproduction, quotation, or publication. Contact Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries for details.

Administrative InformationReturn to Top

Processing Note

Processed by Don Romero, 2015.

Related Materials

Dr. Kyo Koike, Frank Kunishige, and Iwao Matsushita each have their own collections, located at the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. Dr. Koike was a founding member and president of the Seattle Camera Club for a time; his work is in Photograph Collection 262. Frank Kunishige was also a founding member of the SCC; his work is in Photograph Collection 343. Another charter member of the SCC was Iwao Matsushita, whose work can be seen in Photograph Collection 162.

Detailed Description of the CollectionReturn to Top

 

Members of Seattle Camera ClubReturn to Top

Container(s) Description Dates
Louis N. Chatani
box:oversize item
XD4 Chatani1
Landscape
The photograph was exhibited at the First Annual Salon of Photography, put on by The Camera Enthusiasts in San Diego, California, 1928.
circa 1928
Virna Haffer
Box/Folder item
1/1 Haffer1 1931
Hiromu Kira
Hiromu Kira was born on April 5, 1898 in Hawaii and grew up in Japan; he then lived in Canada before moving to Seattle in 1917. He bought his first camera in 1919 (a Kodak) and proceeded to reach himself photography, with the first exhibition of his work in 1923. Kira was one of the founding members of the Seattle Camera Club beginning in 1924, and later moved to Los Angeles in 1926. While in Los Angeles, he connected with members of the Japanese Camera Pictorialists of California, but did not join this club. Kira was recognized for his still life photos, in particular images of folded paper birds. His work was published in Camera Craft, Notan, Photo-Era. and the American Annual of Photography. For Kira, photography was not his full-time profession; he worked at a Seattle drugstore selling camera equipment and processing film. He also worked at T. Iwata's Art Store and for RKO Radio Pictures in Los Angeles as a retoucher. Kira died in Los Angeles on July 19, 1991.
Box/Folder item
1/2 Kira1
Industrial building with smokestacks: Urban Buildings
Written on verso: Published as Plate 6 in Pictorial Photography in America, Volume 4
circa 1926
1/2 Kira2a-b
Seattle skyline below cloudy sky: Peaceful City
2a is approximately 10" x 13" and 2b is 5" x 7".
circa 1920s-1930s
Kusatora Matsuki
Kusatora Matsuki was an amateur photographer who worked in a drugstore.
Box/Folder item
1/3 Matsuki1a-b
Man walking in alley with shadows: Sunlight in the Morning
Matsuki1a (8" x10") has SCC Notan label on verso. Matsuki1b is approximately 11" x 14".
circa 1929
Yukio Morinaga
Yukio Morinaga was born on January 11, 1888 in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. After emigrating to the U.S. he moved to Seattle in 1907. He and fellow photographer Hiromu Kira worked for Mr. Yasukichi Chiba, who was also an amateur photographer and like the two men, a founding member of the SCC. Morinaga and Kira worked in the camera department of the store and they often socialized with Dr. Kyo Koike who had his medical practice a few blocks away. Koike and other SCC members relied on Morinaga’s darkroom expertise to print many of their exhibition photographs.
Box/Folder item
1/4 Morinaga1
Biplanes in the sky: Magellans of Today
Written on verso: Published in XX Salon Int'l de Photographie 1925, p. 31. Published in Notan, May 8, 1925.
1924
1/4 Morinaga2
Morinaga's house
Written on verso: From Noma.
undated
1/4 Morinaga3
Holiday greeting card by Morinaga
Written on verso: From Noma.
undated
1/4 Morinaga4
Morinaga embossed envelope
1940
Fred Ogasawara
Fred Yutaka Ogasawara was born in 1883 and was one of the founding members of the Seattle Camera Club. He later lived in Portland and was one of the most internationally exhibited members of the SCC. Ogasawara returned to Japan before WW II; unfortunately, very little of his work and biographical information about him has survived.
Box/Folder item
1/5 Ogasawara1 circa 1920s-1930s
1/5 Ogasawara2 circa 1920s-1930s
1/5 Ogasawara3 circa 1920s-1930s
1/5 Ogasawara4 circa 1920s-1930s
1/5 Ogasawara5 circa 1920s-1930s
1/5 Ogasawara6 circa 1920s-1930s
1/5 Ogasawara7 circa 1920s-1930s
Soichi Sunami
Soichi Sunami was born in Okayama, Japan on February 18, 1885. He emigrated to the United States in 1905 and arrived in Seattle on February 24, 1907. He became interested in photography as a young art student when he was part of a group of young Issei modern artists in Seattle who studied under Fokko Tadama. By 1918 he was living in Tacoma, where he worked as a cook, but shortly thereafter he returned to Seattle and found employment in Ella McBride’s studio. Sunami exhibited in the first Frederick & Nelson Salon in 1920, where he was one of only a few regional artists to be presented with an award. The following years, he participated in the North American Times Exhibition of Pictorial Photographs represented by six works. A few months later, he was awarded two additional prizes in the Frederick & Nelson Salon. In 1922, he moved to New York City to pursue his art studies. Soichi maintained his contacts in the Pacific Northwest, although he lived in New York. He exhibited with the Seattle Camera Club (SCC) in 1926, where his single entry was a portrait of artist Walter Kethmiller. The following year, he exhibited a chloride photograph titled Claire de Lune in the third SCC annual salon. According to his widow, Sunami, like Fred Yutaka Ogasawara, was an out-of-state member of SCC. He later worked for the Museum of Modern Art and produced over 20,000 large-format negatives for the museum's archives. Soichi Sunami died on November 12, 1971.
Box/Folder item
1/6 Sunami1a-c 1921

Photos collected or displayed by the Seattle Camera Club: Identified PhotographersReturn to Top

These photographers were likely connected to the Seattle Camera Club, probably through correspondence and exchange of photos for exhibits.

Container(s) Description Dates
John Bertram Eaton
John Bertram Eaton was born in England and emigrated to Australia with his family eight years later. His father ran a small gallery and framing shop in Melbourne, where Eaton began work. In the early 1920s his photographs were included in local and international exhibitions, and in 1921 he joined the Victorian Pictorial Workers Society. Four years later he held a solo exhibition of 124 photographs, nearly all of them landscapes. He became a founding member of the Melbourne Camera Club and remained a prolific exhibitor into the late 1940s.
Box/Folder item
1/7 Eaton1 1928
James Wallace Pondelicek
James Wallace Pondelicek was an award winning pictorialist photographer from Chicago who was active during the 1920's. His photographs often consisted of Art Deco fantasy-themed idyllic nudes typically taken along the shores of Lake Michigan and high society commercial portraiture of Chicago's rich and beautiful. His work appeared in the Art Deco era periodicals Theater Magazine and Shadowland - Expressing the Arts. As the onset of the Great Depression made work scarce, and in the midst of a messy divorce from his wife, the artist killed himself by a self inflicted gunshot in 1929.
Box/Folder item
1/8 Pondelicek1 1923
Rovere Scott
Rovere Scott worked in San Francisco and lived in Berkeley.
Box/Folder item
1/9 Scott1 circa 1923
1/9 Scott2 circa 1920s
1/9 Scott3 undated
1/9 Scott4 circa 1920s-1930s
1/9 Scott5 circa 1930

Photos collected or displayed by the Seattle Camera Club: Unidentified PhotographersReturn to Top

These photographers, although unidentified, were likely connected to the Seattle Camera Club, probably through correspondence and exchange of photos for exhibits.

Container(s) Description Dates
Box/Folder item
1/10 UN1 undated
1/10 UN2 undated
1/10 UN3 undated
1/10 UN4 undated
box:oversize
XD4 UN6
Mt. Rainier [Mt. Rainier and a cloud seen from across a meadow]
This photograph was probably by a member of the Seattle Camera Club or by someone who exhibited with them
between 1923 and 1929

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Mountains--United States--Photographs
  • Photographers--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Ships--California--San Francisco--Photographs
  • Trees--United States--Photographs
  • Visual Materials Collections (University of Washington)

Personal Names

  • Koike, Kyo, 1878 or 1879-1947--Photographs

Corporate Names

  • Seattle Camera Club
  • Seattle Camera Club--Archives
  • Seattle Camera Club--Photographs

Other Creators

  • Personal Names
    • Chatani, Louis N., 1881-1968 (photographer)
    • Haffer, Virna (photographer)
    • Kira, Hiromu, 1898- (photographer)
    • Matsuki, Kusatora, 1879- (photographer)
    • Morinaga, Yukio, 1888-1968 (photographer)
    • Ogasawara, Fred, 1883- (photographer)
    • Sunami, Soichi, 1885-1971 (photographer)