rat city streets
Lisa Ahlberg
22nd July - 26th August 2023
Opening reception 3-5pm 22nd July
Rat City Streets is a vivid and intimate portrait of the White Center neighborhood and its residents. Lisa Ahlberg has spent more than 20 years photographing in the White Center neighborhood, making portraits reflecting the rich diversity of the neighborhood’s residents. Her work documents how the urban landscape shifts over time as Seattle’s gentrification encroaches on the neighborhood.
Image credit: Gary on Delridge, 2001, Lisa Ahlberg
There is a passion for this small community on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington. Officially, it’s an unincorporated part of King County. It’s a proud neighborhood, rich in character, that strikes a balance between bars, hair and nail salons, marijuana shops, a favorite roller skating rink, auto body repair shops and many wonderful local restaurants that represent the diverse working class and immigrant community.
I’ve been drawn for decades to the neighborhood with its immigrant population that's come from all over the globe - Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has been an area centered in the traditional Seattle working class of aircraft manufacture, ship building, small industry and the service sector - the same people I worked with on the factory floor at Boeing for two decades.
I’ve been shooting portraits on the streets in White Center, Washington since 2001. I didn’t grow up there. I grew up in a small town in Minnesota.
It’s ofter referred to as Rat City, which has nothing to do with rats. But it’s mostly embraced by the locals as a nickname that seems to fit. I like White Center for the same reason a lot of other people do. It feels real, a distinct community. It has the feel and flavor of a small town. It doesn’t have a lot of big box stores or fancy boutiques. But the neighborhood is in transition as the working class more and more is getting pushed out of Seattle.
— Lisa Ahlberg
lisa ahlberg
Lisa Ahlberg is a Seattle based portrait and documentary photographer interested in people’s relationship to place.
Lisa has spent more than 20 years photographing in the White Center neighborhood, making portraits reflecting the rich diversity of the neighborhood’s residents. Her work documents how the urban landscape shifts over time as Seattle’s gentrification encroaches on the neighborhood.
She is a graduate of the Photographic Center Northwest, a center for the photographic arts in the Pacific Northwest. From 2009 - 2015, she was a member of its Board of Directors, then its president. She remains an active member of the community of photographers it serves.
Instagram: @lisa.ahlberg
