Seeing Being Seen: A Personal History of Photography
Seeing Being Seen: A Personal History of Photography
Curated by Michelle Dunn Marsh
Jul 5 - Aug 2, 2025
Hello! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by. Please allow me to make some introductions: I am, among other things, a keeper of photographs. I acquired some of these through trade or currency, and have inherited others. The majority on view were given to me by their makers in the course of our work together over the last thirty years. The photographers presented here span the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, as photography itself does. A young medium, its generations collapse and overlap. As a result, there are direct, personal relationships binding these creators to each other, and to me. Many of these iconic figures may be familiar, by name or by image. Others will be new, and I am pleased to acquaint you to them.
I grew up in the Northwest, in the shadow of a (still) restless mountain. People looked at me, and I didn’t like that. So I hid behind my parents, my siblings, my books and my favorite trees, and observed the world. Quietly. I became involved in publishing in junior high school, and that vocation served up ideal dualities—images and words, ephemeral and tangible, hidden and public.
I left Coast Salish territories for the lands of the Mohican and Lenape, and managed to stay quietly productive for a decade. In the upheavals—social, political, economic—of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the times demanded more. In addition to my work in publishing I became a professor, a public speaker, and a bi-coastal advocate for significant photography and its contributions to our culture. And for women. And for alternative viewpoints. All that work continues. The times demand.
I am still shy, despite how I am seen in the world. Photographers who have chosen to view me through their lens have helped me to engage more in seeing. They have given me my father in me. They have given me my mother in me. They have given me myself—joyful, flawed, broken, strong. Grand. Dimensional. Fixed in the frame and in my being, evolving. Like photography.
And you, visitor, who are you? What brings you here? What do you contribute to these relationships, to these photographs and books I love and live with? Minor White once said that it is the viewer who completes the photograph, so you have a significant role. What a responsibility. What a gift. You are very welcome.
Histories are always personal to those who tell the stories, and wield the tools of documentation. Over millennia griots, oracles, priests, and poet warriors have determined what would be repeated, and therefore remembered. I continue in their tradition.
I was raised Catholic, and though they are not the branch of Christianity most versed in Scripture, I have always been partial to the Gospel of John—“In the beginning was The Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.” As a child I thought that meant Divinity was present in books. All books, really—if books had words, and the Word was God, then all books contained God. My understanding of God has expanded from the visual entities of my origins (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Trinity, angels, archangels and saints) to an Eternal Energy, who appears to many peoples and cultures, in many forms. My belief that books are sacred remains unchanged.
I also thought that writing was the only path to books. My father, a self-described “book peddler” for a research institute, told me that if I kept writing, he would take me to New York one day to “meet the publishers.” He died before a number of shared dreams were realized. But I did make it to New York, and found my way into publishing, having learned along the way that there were also roles for editors and designers, proofreaders and printers. And there were visual books! All those illustrated classics of childhood (Winnie the Pooh being a favorite) prepped us for a lifetime of cookbooks and travel books and art books. Who knew that we were actually reading photographs all the time?
In my twenties, a great art director told me to “always be in the room where the strategy is written.” Though at that time my career ambition was to be a better book designer—a position always subject to the decisions of others choosing the authors, the subjects, and yes, the designers—I remembered his words. I accepted every invitation to be in the room. Eventually I took a seat at the table (and then saw how often I had been denied a seat). I learned to set my own table, and invite others to be in the room.
This exhibition is ultimately a celebration of relationships. Those well mentored, who came before me, taught me to love their teachers. The photographers I admire and work with have become my guides, and sometimes my friends. I have been gifted the privilege of teaching, and of learning from my students, and employees. I am always learning from my kin.
Books are portals between generations. They make the past present. They make the present, present. And if the future is fortunate, they will continue to transport us to it, and beyond, through space and time.
- Michelle Dunn Marsh
Conversation with Michelle Dunn Marsh and Adrain Chesser
Sat, Jul 5, 2 PM
Includes the work of:
Robert Adams, Jun Ahn, Stevan A. Baron, Endia Beal, David Beslisle, Paul Caponigro, Danie Carillo, Elinor Carucci, Catherine Chalmers, Adrain Chesser, William Christenberry, Bruce Davidson, Race Dillon, Jeff Dunas, Larry Fink, Marina Font, David Hilliard, Eikoh Hosoe, Eirik Johnson, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Selena Kearney, Lisa Kereszi, Isaac Layman, An-My Lê, Annie Leibowitz,, Charles Lindsay, Peter Lui, Mary Ellen Mark, Lance Mercer, Barbara Morgan, Dorothy Norman, Graham Nash, Joe Park, Swapan Parekh, Charles Peterson, Sylvia Plachy, Meghann Riepenhoff, Eugene Richards, Charlie Rubin, Stephen Shore, Preston Singletary, Jonathan David Smyth, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Carrie Mae Weems, Edward Weston, Alice Wheeler, Minor White, Will Wilson, and David Wojnarowicz.
With additional books by:
Adrian Burrell, Anna Mia Davidson, Rachel Demy, Jesse Diamond, John Divola, Neil Folberg, Nicholas Galanin, Candida Hofer, Molly Landreth, Lisa Leone AnnuPalakunnathu Matthew, Melodie McDaniel, Ira Nowinksi, and Jenny Riffle.
Acknowledgements
My life in photography began with Elena Erber and Ginger Shore at Bard College—thank you, Bruce Chilton, for pointing me to their door. Deep gratitude to my mentor, Stevan A. Baron, who brought me into the temple of 20 E. 23rd Street; to Michael E. Hoffman, keeper of its flame; and to my many colleagues there, especially Wendy Byrne, Melissa Harris, and Diana C. Stoll. Heartfelt thanks to Steve McIntyre and family, and to all co-publishers of Minor Matters—particularly our Legacy Publishers, including Freddie Yudin, Dabi Stathakopoulos, and Ken Baron—for all we have accomplished together in making books. I know personally 44 of the 50-plus photographers included here—thank you for the privilege of working with you, living with your work, your trust, and in many cases, your friendship.
To my family—Alistaire, Jackie, Xavier, Kaiboy, and Heath Marsh; Samantha, Jessica, Jazmin, Liam, and Chelsea; Joyce Dunn; Otto, Anastasia, and Steve; Conor, Aidan, Cecilia, and Kevin; Jesse, Kerlin, Peter, and Betsy; Charlotte, Thaddeus, and Amy; Owen, Audra, Barbara, and Arjun; Roger; Viveki; Sylvia; Sandy and Cesia; Fiona, Irene, Sarah, Walter, Nola, and all my cousins in Eire and in Oz—love always.
Otto, Madeleine, and Kiana at Blick Art in Seattle gently framed many pieces for this exhibit, and I am grateful. To Adrain Chesser, Chris Rauschenberg, and the Exhibitions Committee of Blue Sky Gallery, and to C. Meier and the staff—congratulations on fifty years of championing this artform, and thank you.
Michelle Dunn Marsh (b. 1973, Seattle) is a writer of Indo-Burmese and Irish descent. She conceived, and with Steve McIntyre co-founded Minor Matters, a collaborative publishing platform, in 2013. They launched Book Pitch, a consulting service for aspiring authors, in 2020. Through these endeavors they have guided or published over 175 people, distributing books to all US states and over twenty countries.
Dunn Marsh spent fifteen years with the nonprofit publisher Aperture Foundation, New York; was senior editor of art and design at Chronicle Books in San Francisco; and for seven years led Photographic Center Northwest. She has taken part in the creation of over two hundred books, and curated three museum exhibitions (Jim Marshall’s The Rolling Stones 1972 at EMP Museum, Seattle, 2012; Lisa Leone’s Here I Am at the Bronx Museum in 2014; and Charles Peterson’s Nirvana: On Photography and Performance, currently on view at Tacoma Art Museum) among other notable curatorial projects.
She has lectured at Parsons | The New School for Social Research, Yale University, The Seagull School of Publishing, Kolkatta, PhotoIreland and elsewhere on visual literacy and publishing. She holds a BA from Bard College, where she is a lifetime emeritus member of the Board of Governors, and an MS in Publishing from Pace University. On sunny days, she drives her 1950 Studebaker.