Gaining Exposure

SOMETIME AFTER the 30-year-old Frank Nowell married Elizabeth Davis in 1894, the couple moved to California, where Frank became an agent for his father's Alaskan mining interests. Frank then took a hobbyist's interest in photography. He joined his father in 1900, and Elizabeth soon followed, bringing Frank's camera with her. In the next few years Nowell created a photographic record of Alaska that he is still famous for.

In the Northwest, Nowell became the "Official Photographer" of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. He recorded first the A-Y-P's construction and then, in 1909, the six-month world's fair itself as it was sumptuously outfitted on a University of Washington campus picturesquely reshaped for it. The size of Nowell's official endeavor can be grasped from the accompanying photograph of his A-Y-P headquarters and the crew of 16 photographers with their oversized cameras.

About 660 of Nowell's A-Y-P images "returned" to campus about 40 years ago, and most of them can now be enjoyed on the University Libraries Web page with this link, http://content.lib.washington.edu/aypweb/index.html. But Nowell and his crew made many thousands of images at A-Y-P, and so the mystery recurs: What became of them and the negatives?

In the next three years Seattle citizens will be getting many more glimpses, and not just Nowell's. Walt Crowley, director of historylink.org, and Leonard Garfield, director of the Museum of History & Industry, have been named co-chairs of Mayor Greg Nickels' A-Y-P task force. The two hope by next year to have outlined a whole program of events and activities to commemorate the 100th anniversary of what Garfield calls "Seattle's first grand civic celebration, distinguished by its spirit of innovation and internationalism."

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.