Capturing Time

Paulu T. Saari (1919-2011)
        Photographer

Mr. Saari's lifetime pursuit of photography began as a child when, one day, he chased a robin around the neighborhood until it finally landed on a fencepost. After shooting an entire roll of film, he found he had only two images of the elusive bird - and both were double-exposed.

Mr. Saari's first experience in Alaska was working in Denali National Park with the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937. During World War II he joined the Coast Guard, and served in Ketchikan and the Aleutian Islands, among other places.

In the 1950s, he returned to Ketchikan to find a thriving, booming town brimming with visual abundance. The tunnel, the pulp mill, corresponding social scenes, and a vibrant fishing industry all unfolded before the camera like that robin on the fencepost. Mr. Saari worked for both the Ketchikan Daily News and the pulp mill, in turns.

In 2003, he donated his collection of photographs and negatives - numbering in the thousands - to Ketchikan Museums. For successive years, he spent every Thursday morning at the museum, working to identify and catalogue this vast resource.

Additional photographers featured in this exhibit

• Harriet Elizabeth Hunt (1865-1934)
  
• Con Giebel (1878-1965)
  
• Benjamin Alfred Haldane (1874-1941)
  
• David Nicoll (1877-1937)
  
• Alfred Milotte (1904-1989)
  
• Otto C. Schallerer (1884-1968)
  
• Hall Anderson (1949- )