Archives West Finding Aid

Alvin Ziontz was born in Chicago on August 8, 1928. He was interested in art as a boy and was awarded a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago but turned away from art to study law. He attended the University of Chicago Law School, receiving his J.D. in 1951. He moved to Seattle with his wife and family in 1954 and was a practicing attorney from 1954 to 1994. He founded a law firm that specialized in representing American Indian tribes. In 2009 the University of Washington Press published his book, "A Lawyer in Indian Country." In 1975 Ziontz began photographing the streets of Seattle as as hobby. After he retired, he took classes at the Photographic Center Northwest and became a full-time photographer making images of Seattle, New York, Paris and India, as well as studio and event photography. In 2000 he started a project documenting the lives of older women in their own environments. This work was exhibited in one-man shows under the name of The Feminine Image and In Her Own Light at the University of California, Berkeley and Portland State University. He stopped working in photography in 2002 when physical problems made it difficult for him to work.