Seema Aissen Weatherwax

Seema Aissen Weatherwax ( born August 25, 1905 in Chernihiv, Russian Empire, now Ukraine, † June 25, 2006 in Santa Cruz, California ) was an American photographer.

Life

Seema Aissen was born the second of three daughters of the strictly Jewish couple Avram and Reva Aissen. Due to the anti-Jewish sentiment in the Russian Empire in 1912, the family emigrated first in the United Kingdom and in 1922 from Boston in the United States. There, she took her first job in a photo lab. This activity then placed them in a laboratory in New Jersey, New Mexico, California and Tahiti continued. She also was active in the Young Communist League. In Tahiti, they also began to photograph themselves.

In Los Angeles she joined in the 1930s, the Workers Film and Photo League. She seated herself throughout her life for equal rights. With artists and political activists such as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Woody Guthrie was a friend for many years. In Yosemite National Park, she worked for Ansel Adams and was also a close friend of his family. In 1942, she left Yosemite to marry Jack Weatherwax, for which she also worked as a photo technician. She supported his work as an author and his activities left in Los Angeles. In 1984 she moved to Santa Cruz to California, where her husband died three weeks after the move.

After a year of mourning Seema Weatherwax stepped into the public eye and put her own art and photo collection at charity shows from. She joined the local organizations of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom ( WILPF ) at, was elected to the leadership of both organizations and was soon quite well known in Santa Cruz.

Shortly before her 94th birthday, she decided some of their old negatives to print yet. She began to rethink and decided to make their own work more to the fore. She was honored by the Parliament of California as Women of the Year 1999. So they started in 2000 in order to organize public exhibitions. In 2005, the fifth public exhibition of their work took place in Santa Cruz on the occasion of an exhibition at the University of California. In the same year she celebrated her hundredth birthday and could also publishing their edited by Sara Halprin Biography Seema 's Show in August 2005: Experiencing A Life on the Left. This was published by the University of New Mexico Press, and is based on interviews that go back to the year 1986.

Seema Weatherwax died on June 25, 2006 in Santa Cruz, two months before her 101st birthday.

Discount

• Tapes and interview transcripts are located in the Special Collections of the University of California at Santa Cruz. There you can also find most of her photographs, some more are in the Special Collection at Stanford University.
• Written by Jack Weatherwax estate is managed by the Smithsonian Institution.