"I have always captured stories with my eyes and early on found I could trap little bits of some of them." ...from A Life in Photography, 1989 Parish
Our 1950s television, resembling a box camera in a tall wooden cabinet, had a small, slightly oval screen displaying only black and white images. Watching it taught me to appreciate the subtleties and symmetry of light and shadow in black and white photography, and to recognize masterful photographic art.
Viewing historic film negatives in large format within the Jeffers Art Studio archive - after many years of working with 35mm film in my professional career as a photographer (since 1975)- I fell in awe and in love. The wonder of viewing and printing the 8x10 historic films. They also showed me the history of my generational home region that I had explored ...became layered and nuanced by with time. But, it was the talent of Vibert's brilliant Artist's Eye that truly captured me knowing immediately I was looking at the work of an artist on the level of those Back East and considered The Best. Those writers and critics obviously hadn't seen the work of Our Artists. As no one of my generation knew of this local talent and photographers of the past here in the 'remote' PNW they weren't considered as artists - rather just working photographers doing what they loved.
...Looking for pg 2
JOURNALS OF A SHADOW CATCHER
Odds and Ends
HERE IS AN EARLY NEWS STORY ABOUT MY JOURNEY
HERE IS A FILM ABOUT WHERE IT BEGAN ~ 1986. Created with The Evergreen State College
Parish with Visual History Walls
The photographs and developing them into large format prints was like having a tutor in the darkroom. Later, after researching local and regional photo collections available, I realized the danger of what was lost already and created a business with the Mission to Preserve & Celebrate the Photographers and Photohistory of the Salish Sea and Pacific Northwest Regions of North America. And to Celebrate my Home Region that means so much to me.
As I receive no grant funding and operate as a private stock photography business funding my preservation and restoration of historical photographs solely by the Sales and Licensing of these photographs - I thank you for your interest and also your Sales!
Parish is a multi-generational native of the Puget Sound and Salish Sea Region always living along the shores of the inland sea in the shadow of great mountain ranges. She began making and collecting photographs as a child in the 1950s and has been a working professional in the fields of communications and the Humanities specializing in Still photography of the Pacific Northwest and Salish Sea region of North America since 1975.
While researching & producing a traveling display on "The Political Pioneers ~ Early Women of the Washington Legislature" in 1980, she discovered her love for historical photography and purchased the Jeffers Art Studio Collection in Olympia, Washington. Discovering that the contents of some of the earliest photography studios were regularly and without foresight regularly destroyed along with numerous traditional ways of life in her region with the rapidly changing attitudes about the environment. It soon became her mission to collect, preserve, educate, and honor the photographers, and their art. She believes in 'Museums without walls' using commercial and public spaces to teach history - visually. (from early article about Parish Collection)
I still have my first camera, the Adventurer 620. It is plastic, cost two cereal boxtops and $3 dollars. I was seven. I fell in love with black & white photography as it was my dad's hobby and writing - when a junior high teacher encouraged me by reading a story in class and praising it. My early career was in photojournalism and as a freelance photographer. Today, I still consider that I am a Photo-Journalist - of the Past.".
After a childhood accident where I was literally blown-up, suffered horrific burns and came through an NDE, I was maimed and found my body had to keep moving - no office job. After following an odd course of seemingly unrelated college studies in business, communications, art and Iits - using the photographs I collected.