For Sharon Eva Grainger portrait photography is intimate and personal. Before the
shutter snaps, Grainger “sees” a vision days or months before the actual shoot. Once
this image is captured in her mind’s eye, Grainger crystallizes this vision with the
subject. Grainger’s formal training began with her apprenticeship to the German
photographer, Uka Meissner. Her own family background of five generations of artists
includes three generations of photographers. Grainger currently works independent
contracts with Lindblad Expeditions as a Certified National Geographic Photo Instructor,
traveling and teaching about photography all over the world. Her portraiture of
indigenous peoples has been published in the Time-Life book #39, Indians of the Western Range, the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians (#12 Plateau) and recently Grainger’s images were paired with Edward Curtis’ images for a slide
presentation that accompanied a silent film made by Edward Curtis in 1914. The event
traveled from the Moore Theatre in Seattle, Washington to the Getty Museum in Los
Angeles, the Chan Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Field Museum in
Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the Natural History Museum
in New York City.

She is currently involved in long-term collaborative work with the Kwakwaka’wakw in
Alert Bay, British Columbia. She is helping facilitate research through visual as well as audio recordings. Her photographs have become the subject of many exhibitions in the U’mista Cultural Centre. 

 

She was also chief photographer on the Opening Hearts project with Lindblad Exhibitions in Mexico, photographing Indigenous peoples of North western Mexico.

 

Grainger was also the featured photographer for Living Cultures I, an exhibition of color images at the Seattle Public Library. Indigenous writers made lengthy descriptions for each group of photographs, speaking about the images from their ancestral perspective. In Living Cultures II, Grainger’s black and white photographs hung next to original Edward S. Curtis images. The American Museum of Natural History in New York City recently renovated their Northwest Coast Hall, using several Grainger images as part of their permanent exhibition.