Seema's Show: A Life on the Left

By Sara Halprin

Book Overview

"This telling of an extraordinary old woman's love affair with the American twentieth century--her unheralded vital place in its art, her delight in its diversity, her lifelong Left activism, eyes-wide-open to both blessings and bummers--is a tonic for existential despair. We need this wonderful book."--Ronnie Gilbert, The Weavers At seventeen Seema Aissen got her first job drying prints in a photo-finishing lab in Boston and joined the newly-founded Young Communist League; at thirty-three she was hired by Ansel Adams to run his darkroom in Yosemite; at thirty-seven she married the writer Jack Weatherwax and devoted herself to supporting his work; widowed at seventy-nine she began a new life; at ninety-five she had her first photographic exhibit. Sara Halprin began recording interviews with Seema in 1986 and took the title and narrative frame for this book from that first show. Seema's Show follows Seema's life from her birth in 1905 to radical Jewish parents in Czarist Russia, emigration to England, then Boston and Los Angeles, where she joined the Film and Photo League, began her lifelong work for racial justice, and formed enduring friendships with artists and political activists including Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and Woody Guthrie. In 1984 Seema moved to Santa Cruz, California, where she became a central figure in progressive culture and began, in 2000, to show her own work. "Like my grandmother, Imogen Cunningham, Seema Weatherwax tells it like it is. This astonishingly candid biography vividly brings to life the great twentieth-century California art photographers--Adams, Weston, Cunningham--as well as left-wing activists like Woody Guthrie. If we had national treasures, Seema would be one."--Elizabeth Partridge, author of Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082633847X
• ISBN13: 9780826338471
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Book Well Worth Reading!

Seema's Show is an engaging, informative, and easy-to-read biography of a strong, complex woman whose life has so far spanned 100 years. Sara Halprin moves seamlessly back and forth as an interviewer/chronicler and a friend. Halprin artfully frames each chapter in Seema's rich life in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. Through Halprin's keen eye, we come to learn what life was like for a female photographer and activist during the 20th century. Halprin's work as therapist lends an intimate understanding of human behavior, and her experience in film-making provides a richness and depth not seen in most biographies. If you're asking yourself, "Who's Seema Weatherwax?" then this is the book for you. Halprin won't let you down.

A Remarkable Book about a Remarkable Woman

Sara Halprin has given us a book deftly navigating between biograpy, memoir and oral history. Her subject, Seema Weatherwax, celebrated her 100th year last summer. Halprin introduces us to a woman's woman, an accomplished photographer who exhibited her photographs at her first public showing when she turned 95. While her artistry with a camera was present from an early age, it was honed while working as Ansel Adams' master printer at Yosemite. It shows in the photographs she took while visiting the dust bowl labor camps with her husband author, Jack Weatherwax and their friend Woody Guthrie in the late 30s's. Her compassion for the subjects of her photographs represent her lifelong effort to seek a more just society. And for her this was always a matter of connecting people with people -- her way of going beyond ideology, especially that of the Communist Party. For Seema, the connection between art and working for social justice is a seamless one. At 100 she continues that work and I highly recommend Halprin's book introducing us to this remarkable woman, an elder and mentor for our times.